Post 16: "The Purple Haze" in Impressionism

 "Purple does something strange to me"

Charles Bukowski

 (The People Look Like Flowers at Last, 2007)

To help us understand why the colour purple  (also known as violet, lilac, or mauve) was so abundantly used by the Impressionists, let's take a look first at their colours in general.

The Impressionists were "the colourists", meaning they favoured colour over lines.  Additionally, colour to them carried more meaning than simply filling in the contours expectedly. With their colours, they stated: This is how I see it, and opened the freedom of expression doors for future artists. And so a hundred years later, we will have Mark Rothko saying: This is how I feel it, using exactly, and only, blocks of colour to express himself.

Unlike any seen in art before, Impressionists' colours were radically brilliant and vivid. Wynford Dewhurst (Impressionist Painting, 1904) explains: "The Impressionists purified the palette, discarding blacks, browns, ochres, and muddy colours generally,… These they replaced by new and brilliant combinations, the result of modern chemical research. Cadmium Pale, Violet de Cobalt, Garance rose doré, enabled them to attain a higher degree of luminosity than was before possible."

Hermitage Garden, Maison Rouge, 1877

Camille Pissarro (1830-1903)

50 x 60 cm, oil on canvas

Private Collection

Intertwined, science and industry transformed every aspect of society in the 19th century, art included, via experimental artists. Two important things happened, making it possible for the Impressionists to become revolutionary colourists: Michel Chevreul's Theory of Colours (he discovered that complementary colours, from the opposite sides of the wheel, put next to each other, enhance each other) and the Industrial production of synthetic dyes. 

Fun fact: Chevreul is one of the 72 scientists, engineers, mathematicians, whose names Eiffel engraved on the Eiffel Tower for the 1889 opening. Anticipating attacks from groups that found it ugly, Eiffel decided to 'armour' the tower with the names of prominent inventors since the French Revolution. Even funnier fact: Impressionists, although they approved of the Eiffel Tower and saw it as a symbol of progress and modernity, never actually painted it! 

Pissarro (painting above), being "The first Impressionist", as Cezanne called him, was leading the way in embracing and implementing complementary colours contrast and harmony theory. He even framed his bright, yellow-bathed paintings in purple frames!  Cezanne, in his 10-year Impressionist period, learned about colour from Pissarro, proudly presenting himself as "Cézanne the pupil of Pissarro".

                                      

Cliff Walk at Pourville, 1882

Claude Monet (1840-1926)

66.5 x 82.3 cm, oil on canvas

Monet Art Institute Chicago

This breezy Monet painting is the one I chose to do a colour analysis for an Oxford course. Here is a brief version of it: 

For The Cliff Walk, Monet used bright hues of blue, green and yellow with touches of purple, pink, and orange. The shadowed areas (the dark sides of the cliff) have the same blue, green, and purple hues as the upper side of the cliff, but without the touches of yellow, white and pink. The sky is painted with translucent, thin and almost transparent layers, while the rest of the painting is done with opaque, thick ones. Emphasising the focus, the paint texture is most visible on the human figures and the umbrella. The lightest tone of the sea and the darkest tones of the cliff meet in the middle, creating a dramatic vertical. The effect of wind in the moving thick grass is achieved by short, curved brushstrokes of complementary colours put next to each other - blue next to yellow and orange next to green. 

There it was, the fundamentally different way of painting, using brush and hand movements, textures and colour thickness to achieve the desired effect. For the first time, artists are letting us see the process and the method. The irrevocable democratisation of art. The viewer is invited to engage. Modern art is born.

Waterloo Bridge in London, 1902

Claude Monet (1840-1926)

65.7 x 100.5 cm, oil on canvas

Monet National Museum of Western Art Tokyo

The House of Parliament, Seagulls, 1903

Claude Monet (1840-1926)

81 x 92 cm, oil on canvas

Monet Princeton University Art Museum

Now, about that "Purple Mania". The major reason for it was that Purple or Mauveine was the first synthetic dye to be developed in 1856 (UK). Then came the invention of cobalt violet in 1859 (France) and manganese violet in 1868 (Germany). With mass industrial production, artists gained access to a stable, long-lasting colour, packed in portable tubes for the first time. First, there was purple, and then over 2,000 synthetic dyes by 1913.

Before the mid-19th century, according to one study, purple could be found in only 0.06% of the 140,000 artworks examined (The World According to Colour, James Fox from Allen Tager's article). Artists avoided it as it aged badly, and therefore wasn't worth mixing pure blue and red for it. 

Monet had an additional advantage: his brother Leon had worked in the Swiss synthetic dye company Geigy since 1872 and gave Monet a tour of the factory near Roen. While in London, Monet painted a series (examples above) of the Waterloo Bridge (15 paintings) and The Houses of Parliament (19 paintings), all of which were studies and variations of light and purple colour discreetly interrupted by the architecture. At the time, critics called his London paintings - 'purple smears"! They were right in the sense that Monet basically painted the heavily polluted fog and smog over London. 

L'Hortensia, 1894

Berthe Morisot (1841-1895)

73,1 x 60,4 cm, oil on canvas

Morisot Musee d'Orsay

Paule Gobillard Painting, 1887

Berthe Morisot (1841-1895)

86 x 94 cm, oil on canvas

Morisot Musee Marmottan

Après le Déjeuner (After Lunch), 1881

81 x 100 cm, oil on canvas

Berthe Morisot (1841-1895)

Morisot Private Collection

Now stable and affordable, purple synthetic dye bled from canvases into shops, ballrooms and households. It was known that this colour was the favourite of Empress Eugenie, often called the "Empress of fashion". Her reign ended in 1870, right at the time when purple dye became widely available. Ladies were crazy about it; finally, the middle classes could wear the 'royal' colour!

Art critics despised synthetic paints, especially those with a purple hue. They saw it as disrespectful to naturalism, a degradation and a real madness or mania. Many of the attacks came from journalists inexperienced in looking at colour in paintings, and instead focused on the narrative or metaphors. They thought of themselves as witty while writing things as "coloured wool" (Bertall on Monet, Thomson p.190) or "the tub of soapy water in which the Batignolles school drowns everything indiscriminately..."(Baron Schop on Impressionists, Thomson p.191) 

Danseuses aux jupes violettes, bras leves 

(Dancers in violet robes, raised hands), 1895-98

Edgar Degas (1834-1917)

90 x 53 cm, pastel

Fitz Museum E. Degas

More than anything, purple paint was a statement for the Impressionists. It was a torch they carried in the battle against conformity, tradition, dusty rules and uniformity. To critics' annoyance, for the Impressionists, the subject was of very little importance ("He didn't allow things time to take hold of him", Bonnard on Monet, Thomson p. 220). The depiction of a sensation created by the play of colour and light was the only relevant goal.

"Not allowing things to take hold of him" could also be a perfect phrase for Rothko's work.  Here is the non-denominational chapel he created in Houston, Texas. A place "welcoming all religions and belonging to none". A place for praying, meditating, and thinking. 

Looking at light moving over time across purple panels, to me, is as fine a closing as any to this 100 Years of Purple and Art Story. 

Mark Rothko Chapel Photo

Rothko Chapel

Sources:

Books:  Impressionist Painting: Its Genesis and Development, by Wynford Dewhurst, Project Gutenberg eBook, The World According to Colour: A Cultural History (2021) by James Fox; Impressionism, Origins, Practice, Reception by Belinda Thomson

The laws of contrast of colour, tr. by J. Spanton : Michel Eugène Chevreul : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

Impressionism and the Inventions of Colour | Impressionist & Modern Art | Sotheby’s

Making Colour review – enter a dazzling, eye-opening world | National Gallery | The Guardian

The Who’s Who of Color Theory – Adam Marelli Workshops

Claude Monet's Older Brother Helped Shape the Impressionist Movement

Occurrences of the Purple Pigment Fluorite on Paintings in the National Gallery

Purple shades - Impressionism

Art Bites: Why the Impressionists Went Gaga for Purple

This Artist Is the Only Person Banned From Using the World’s Pinkest Pink

Why it took us thousands of years to see the colour violet | Psyche Ideas

Why Was the Color Violet Rarely Used by Artists before the 1860s? in: Journal of Cognition and Culture Volume 18 Issue 3-4 (2018)

Mauvéine — Wikipédia

La mauvéine : la folle histoire d’une synthèse ratée devenue le premier colorant industriel – Alma Mater

Woman's dress. Taffeta and silk. France, c.1869. - napoleon.org

Purple shades - Impressionism

Post 15: Paintings only Female Impressionists could have painted

 

Steady as She Goes

"I love to see a young girl go out and grab the world by the lapels.
 Life is a bitch. 
You've got to go out and kick ass."
Maya Angelou, interview, 1986

Petit Fille dans un fauteuil bleu (Little Girl in a Blue Armchair), 1878
Mary Cassatt (1844-1926)
89.5 x 129.8 cm, oil on canvas
Little Girl National Gallery of Art Wash.DC

        

La Chambre Bleue (The Blue Room), 1923
Susan Valadon (1865-1938)
90 x 116 cm, oil on canvas
The Blue Room Centre Pompidou

I positioned these two 'blue' paintings next to each other, firstly because I love them dearly, and secondly, they certainly could have been painted only by women painters. 

Both were painted in Paris, the first one 22 years before 1900, and the other 23 years after 1900, providing a perfect frame for a period in which girls born into a restrictive society grew up to live in a rather progressive one. A little bored rebel who doesn't want to "sit properly", as well as a relaxed, self-sufficient, feeling-good-in-her-body smoker and reader, both were given freedom to rest comfortably and not pose. Only women painters could have given them that freedom.

Cassatt's iconic "Girl in a Blue Armchair", rejected by the American section of the Paris World's Fair for its "radicality" in 1878, was welcomed at the 1879 Impressionist exhibition, and opened the door for her to Parisian and international collectors. 

About 40 years later, Valadon's powerful "The Blue Room" portrays a woman who seems to have "kicked some ass" in her lifetime. A modern painting of a free modern woman. Although the years match, this could never be the grown-up girl from the first painting, as Cassatt and Valadon belonged to and painted two deeply segregated classes. Valadon, being a child at the same time as the little girl in the blue chair, was rarely bored; instead, she worked hard, helping her mother wash laundry for exactly those kinds of bourgeois families. 

Dans la Loge, 1878

Mary Cassatt (1844-1926)

81.28x66.04 cm, oil on canvas

Museum of Fine Arts Boston

Le Berceau (The Cradle), 1872
Berthe Morisot (1841-1895)
56 x 46.5 cm, oil on canvas
Le Berceau Morisot Orsay

After two paintings of women not bothered that we are looking at them, here are two Impressionist paintings of women looking at others, and the way they are doing that, makes these works modern and clearly painted by women.

Cassatt's Dans la Loge depicts a woman not as the object of beauty, purity, or virtue. Cassatt is capturing the ultimate contemporary moment: a free woman doing what is not expected in public space! She, just like a man, is actively looking at others instead of being a passive object of gaze. She is gazing. Whether her age gives her that freedom or her personality, she doesn't care what others think, including the man we see in the upper left corner. Some art historians even mention the phallic position of the fan in her hand. Cassatt is sending an unambiguous message: women are free to be as good or as bad as men.  

Next is the most famous painting by the most famous female Impressionist, Berthe Morisot. She showed this painting at the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874. Berthe participated in 7 out of 8 Impressionist exhibitions (missing one after the birth of her daughter). Besides the refined technique (the see-through curtain), we have a ground-breaking presentation of motherhood that opens many questions and provokes a debate, as great paintings usually do. Can you tell what is missing? The smile. Morisot portrays her sister Edna (at least as talented a painter as Berthe, who had to give up her artistic career after getting married and having a child) with an ambiguous facial expression. Is the woman in the painting tired, worried, or is it possible that she is missing being an artist and lamenting her choices? A century and a half later, women around the world can still relate to this painting and recognize that dilemma. Only a woman painter could have left that question open. This painting was bought in 1930 by the Louvre. Morisot, like Cassatt, could only dream during their lifetime of any museum buying their work. 

In the second half of the 19th century, the French government rarely bought female artists' paintings for national collections and museums (only 3% of all purchases, source Paris in Ruins). Their work would usually end up in private collections, where it often stayed to this day. That is one of many reasons why we see so few female artists in museum collections. A significant example being London's National Gallery - in its 2300 painting collection, only 21 are by women artists (9 of them). An innovative private guide in London offers a tour exploring those 21 paintings (link in sources).

Another reason would be that, in art history studies, women artists are usually all grouped in one chapter, like exotic birds, and presented only through the prism of how discriminated against they were from the present point of view. Or, more outrageously, not presented at all: the most famous art historian of the 20th century, in his widely referenced, 700-page opus, The Story of Art (the main book in the Oxford course I took), which covers art from prehistoric to modern, does not mention a single non-white or female artist. 

But, let's go back to people whose work aged well, like Louise Breslou. So, here is the one that "rebelled the system from within". She stayed loyal to Salon exhibitions, never joined the Impressionists, and yet didn't compromise her identity.

Gamines (Girls), 1890

Loise Catherine Breslau (1856- 1927)

120 x 220 cm, oil on canvas

Musee Inguimbertine Carpentras

I had the pleasure of standing in front of this huge, powerful painting three times. This photo doesn't do it any service, and the website of the Museum in Carpentras is of no help either. The happiness sparkles from every dot on this canvas, colours are vibrant and playful, and it is a pure joy to witness it in person.

This is one of the first paintings portraying an unorthodox subject for that time, a couple of women in love. No male painter would be allowed into this intimate moment. Loise Breslau lived with her girlfriend, also an artist, Madeleine Zillhardt, for 40 years.  They met at the Parisian Julian Academy (the only one taking female students at the time, but charging them more than men!), and Loise was the one who had a big, flourishing career. Her paintings were regularly exhibited at the Salon, well-received, won awards, and were actually bought by the French government. She also received the French Legion of Honour.

Henry Davison, 1880

Louise Breslau (1856-1927)

87 x 46 cm, oil on canvas

Davison Musee Orsay

Now, if we look at how Louise portrays young British poet Davison, we could say that masculinity or even gender is not the point of attention here. He reminds me here of his contemporary Oscar Wilde, who was, among other things, a big supporter of women's emancipation. 

Thinking about it, I would say that one big contribution by female artists to society is bringing androgyny to the public eye and loosening up the assigned gender roles and looks. To illustrate my point, below are 2 enigmatic paintings by the outstanding Romaine Brooks, who took queerness to the next level:

Peter (A Young English Girl), 1923-24

Romaine Brooks (1874-1970)

91.9 x 62.3 cm, oil on canvas

Peter Girl Smithsonian Museum

Self-Portrait, 1923

117.5 x 68.3 cm, oil on canvas

Romaine Brooks (1874-1979)

Brooks Self Smithsonian

In her self-portrait, by wearing lipstick and men's clothes, Brooks (also awarded the Legion of Honour) claims the right to define for herself who she is. Primarily, women in their path of emancipation wanted to be perceived as persons, and on that path, female artists certainly carried their weight.

Romaine Brooks lived an extraordinary life, almost 100 years long, but decided to stop painting after finishing this portrait at the age of 49.

I suppose in life, an equally important skill to keep going is knowing when to stop.

Sources:

Books: The Story of Art Without Men (Katy Hessel) and Representing Women (Linda Nochlin)

Getting There: Maya Angelou - POLITICO

Women in the National Gallery - guided tour to see female artists

Bing Videos - In Loge, Khan Academy commentary

Christies - Christian Levett's collection of Ancient to Modern Art from the Mougins Museum of Classical Art

Deux jeunes filles près de l'eau - Louise Breslau | Musée d'Orsay - preparatory drawing

Mary Cassatt's Famous Paintings & Feminism - iTravelWithArt

La Luministe - The Passionate Life of Berthe Morisot - iTravelWithArt

The Women Who Dared to Paint | Sotheby’s Magazine | Sotheby’s

Rewriting Art History: How Fede Galizia Brings Women Artists into Focus | Expert Voices | Sotheby’s

3 Women Artists Who Broke Boundaries | 19th Century European Art | Sotheby's

Kunsthalle Bremen

Who Are the Most Important Female Impressionists?

List of women Impressionists - Wikipedia

Women Artists in Paris, 1850-1900: Madeline, Laurence, Alsdorf, Bridget, Becker, Jane R., Bolloch, Joëlle, Hansen, Vibeke Waallann, Kendall, Richard: 9780300223934: Amazon.com: Books

‘Brilliant Exiles’: American Women In Early 20th-Century Paris

Marie Bracquemond: Art History's Lost Impressionist | Art & Object

Bracquemond, Marie - Impressionism

Eva Gonzalès - Wikipedia

Girl Awakening - Eva Gonzalès — Google Arts & Culture

Loise Catherine Breslau - Search Images

Louise Breslau | Impressionist painter | Tutt'Art@ | Pittura * Scultura * Poesia * Musica

Women Artists in Nineteenth-Century France | Essay | The Metropolitan Museum of Art | Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History

Famous Women Impressionists - Notable Female Impressionists

Post 14: Impressionists and Venice

 "Devilishly hard to paint"

 

    Writing these posts feels like 

making a necklace with

 gemstones I find while

 mining in books, web articles, and museum websites.

My string has to hold them together nicely, 

The theme is my pendant

Now here it is, the most brilliant pendant—Venice! We must first visit this city five centuries ago to fully appreciate how Impressionists saw Venice. 

The model of modern society, freed from dogmas and focused on individuals, arose from the Renaissance and the Humanism movement in Florence. However, modern art as we know it today - free to choose the subject matter and free to choose how to express it- was born in Venice. Venice and Florence had a long-standing art school rivalry. For instance, painters who favoured drawing would go to Florence, while Venice was for painters who preferred colour as their main tool (being the world's biggest port, a diversity of pigments could be found in abundance).

The first painter to free up his brush, use colours daringly, and focus on the effects of light instead of on detailing the scene is the Venetian Great Master: Titian (1488-1576).

The Rape of Europa, 1559/62
Titian (1488-1576)
178 x 205 cm, oil on canvas
Titian Gardner Museum

This painting was one of 6 in a mythologic/poetic series - "Poesie" that Titian sent to the Spanish King Philip II. They are considered his most ambitious and impressive body of work, painted towards the end of his long career. His paintings were also commissioned by and sent to many other European courts at the time, as well as to the Pope and the wealthiest families. We can say that Titian was in the 16th century what Picasso was in the 20th - "The Painter".

A hundred years later, one of the best painters of the 17th century, Velázquez from Spain, after seeing Titian's work in the Spanish Royal collection and in Venice, painted The Spinners (below), praising the great Venetian and moving art further into modernity.

The Spinners or the Fable of Arachne, 1655/60
Diego Velázquez (1599-1660)
220 x 289 cm, oil on canvas
Velazquez Prado Museum

This painting is, similarly, one of Velázquez's finest works and one of the last ones he painted. The composition and messages would be too long for this post, but crucial to our story is that tapestry behind all the female figures is of Titian's The Rape of Europa painting (that 'little detail' was discovered only in the mid 20th century!). The modern approach is visible in how every figure and object is created by colours; we can not see any lines. The way he captured the movement of the spinning wheel was unprecedented among his peers, as it is today.  In addition, the central face in the painting is "unfinished", which was revolutionary for his time, and it will still be when the Impressionists do it 200 years later.

We are arriving in 1865. After visiting Spain and the Prado Museum, Manet tells Baudelaire that Velázquez is the greatest painter ever. Among other elements from Velázquez, Manet excelled at "theatricality" and "flatness." His paintings (like Luncheon on the Grass and Olympia) had to be guarded from haters trying to cut them. As we know now, they were too modern, ahead of their time.

But thanks to him and other Impressionists who followed, standing on the shoulders of the giants, the doors of modern art were finally open, letting individual expression be its new foundation. 

And now, we can fully admire how Manet, Renoir, and Monet went back to the "source" to channel their colours freely!

Manet in Venice: 

Le Grand Canal à Venise (Blue Venice), 1875

Eduard Manet (1832-1882)

57.5 x 47.9 cm, oil on canvas

Manet Venise Blue

      Gazzetta di Venezia, on 13 September 1874, announced the arrival of the "Signori Manet"(he and his wife checked into Grand Hotel, "one of the smartest establishments in town" p.371, Gayford). This was his second and last visit to Venice, which lasted one month during which he painted these two paintings of the Grand Canal. Like in Argenteuil, Manet would go immediately to the water, where he would paint from gondolas and boats. 

     Several companions and admirers wrote that although Manet's Venice paintings looked deceivingly casual, they were actually painted through the painful process of hours and hours spent on the water and starting over numerous times. The first painting he finished (Venice Blue, above) was sold for almost 52 million dollars by Christie's in November 2022 to a private collector (the public is unable to see it, thank you very much "1%"). The view is of Palazzo Barbaro with its staircase to the water, the exact Palazzo where Monet and his wife will be staying 36 years later. 

 

Le Grand Canal a Venise, 1875

Eduard Manet (1832-1883)

58 x 71 cm, oil on canvas

Shelburn Museum Vermont

What helps me to differentiate Manet from Monet painting, is to imagine if it is a painting with a "sound" or not. Manet will always include people, transport, and whatever makes noise around him while he paints. Monet's paintings are mostly "quiet", with no people, no boats, just air as the main subject, therefore perfect to be looked at with some background music. I would say that Manet's Venice is a bustling city, while Monet's Venice is a true Serenissima. 

Inciteful Manet realized that Venice is "devilishly hard" to paint. He told his friend: "faced with such a distractingly complicated scene, I must choose a typical incident and define my picture as if I could already see it framed" (p374, Gayford).

Renoir in Venice:

Venice -Fog, 1881,

Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919)

45.4 x 60 cm, oil on canvas

Renoir Venice Kreeger Museum Washington DC

Venice, The Dodge Palace, 1881
Pierre- August Renoir (1841-1919)
54.5 x 65.7 cm, oil on canvas
Renoir Dodge Palace Clark Museum

The Piazza San Marco, Venice, 1881
Pierre-August Renoir (184101919)
89.5 x 104.46 cm, oil on canvas
Renoir Piazza San Marco Minneapolis Institute of Art

     Renoir arrived in Venice in the autumn of 1881, starting his three-month tour of Italy. Further down his journey, he painted more under the influence of classicism, but in Venice, he was still a true Impressionist at heart. These are the three paintings I found from this visit, and for me, they land right between Manet and Monet. We can still see the daily activities and the life of the city, but at the same time, the theme is the fog, the air, the sun reflections, and the atmosphere that 'envelops' the scene as Monet would say. It could be argued, that whenever Renoir holds on to ambiguity and combines it with his uniquely soft brush touches, he rises to the very top, but he had to or chose to compromise his standards occasionally. 

Monet in Venice:

Grand Canal, Venice  1908
Claude Monet (1840-1926)
73.7 x 92.4 cm, oil on canvas
MFA Boston - Monet Grand Canal

San Giorgio Maggiore by Twilight, 1908

Claude Monet (1840-1926)

65.2 x 92.4 cm, oil on canvas

Monet Venice Museum Wales

     Monet arrived in Venice on 8 September (October 1, by some sources) 1908 at the age of 68. He immediately regretted not coming earlier and promised himself and his wife Alice that they would be back next year, saying that "one can never leave Venice without the plan of coming back". A promise not fulfilled. Their only stay in 1908 lasted 10 weeks during which he painted 37 paintings. Not all of them were finished. He returned to them after his wife died in 1911, remembering their happy moments. 

Palazzo da Mula, Venice, 1908

Claude Monet (1840-1926)

61.4 x 80.5 cm, oil on canvas

Monet Venice National Gallery of Art Washington DC

     In Venice, Monet did not create a series of the same scenes in a different light as he did in France. He would work just on one canvas at a time, choosing in total a dozen views a short distance from each other. He focused on the air, mist, and haze between him and the building he was looking at, or him and the water. He called it "the envelope". He writes in a letter: "The Palace that features in my composition was just an excuse for painting the atmosphere". To me, Monet's Venice is a floating dream.

 

Le Palais Ducal, 1908

Claude Monet (1840-1926)

81.3 x 99.1 cm, oil on canvas

Monet Venice Brooklyn Museum

The Church of San Giogio Maggiore, Venice, 1908
Claude Monet (1840-1926)
66.36 x 93.66 cm, oil on canvas
Monet Venice Indianapolis Museum of Art

     In May 1912, a big exhibition of 29 Monet's Venice paintings opened at the Bernheim-Jeune Gallery in Paris. It was a huge success for Monet, who was already established as a leading Impressionist. The only painting Monet left unrevised as it had been painted in the 'plein air' was the last  - "Gondola in Venice". He gave it to his great friend Georges Clemenceau (1841-1929) French Prime Minister of two mandates, who established the separation of church and state in France. Today this painting is in The Nantes Museum of Art. 

 

Gondola in Venice, 3 December 1908
Claude Monet (1840-1926)
81 x 65.2 cm, oil on canvas
Monet Venice Art Museum Nantes

This year, the Brooklyn Museum and the de Young Museum in San Francisco will organize the exhibition Monet & Venice (October 2025 to July 2026). 

Sources:

Book Venice City of Pictures by Martin Gayford

Venetian Color and Florentine Design - The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Arts and Facts: Episode 108: Venetian vs. Florentine Renaissance Art

Mythological paintings (poesie) for Philip II (1553-62)

Titian’s ‘poesie’: The commission | Titian: Love Desire Death | National Gallery, London

The Grand Tour - The Metropolitan Museum of Art

What was the Grand Tour? | Royal Museums Greenwich

Claude Monet (1840-1926), Le Rio de la Salute | Christie's

CLAUDE MONET (1840-1926), Saint-Georges Majeur | Christie's

Museum Barberini | Claude Monet: The Rio della Salute

(#6) CLAUDE MONET | Le Palais Ducal

Venice, the Doge's Palace - Renoir

The Piazza San Marco, Venice, Pierre Auguste Renoir

The Magic of Light on Water in Monet's Venetian Masterpiece | Impressionist & Modern Art | Sotheby’s

Claude Monet | The Doge's Palace Seen from San Giorgio Maggiore | The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Venice by Famous Artists | DailyArt Magazine

Venice Art Bucket List: 20+ Famous Paintings In Venice - The Geographical Cure

Monet in Venice - National Gallery London short video

CLAUDE MONET (1840-1926), Saint-Georges Majeur | Christie's

Artistes — G-P.F.DAUBERVILLE

Titian's innovations

Venice in the Eyes of Claude Monet | DailyArt Magazine

EDOUARD MANET (1832-1883), Le Grand Canal à Venise | Christie's

Claude MONET in Venice

Bing Videos - Trailer for Luchino Visconti masterpiece film : "Death in Venise".

THERESA BERNSTEIN | A Century in Art