Monet Monet Monet

I’ve always quite liked Claude Monet (not to be confused with his friend, Édouard Manet who not only has a similar name but also had a similar painting style). Monet’s paintings always make me think of springtime and Paris and he has the added benefit of not counting among the ranks of the hopelessly depressed. See: Wake me up before you Gogh Gogh and Munch ado about Nothing.

One of his water lily paintings for which he is most famous

His first wife, Camille, died from Tuberculosis at the age of 32 but rather than dissolve into a pit of despair à la Munch, he used his grief and vowing never to be mired in poverty again went on to create some of his greatest paintings. In my head I sort of see it as Scarlet O’Hara in Gone with the Wind, clutching a hand full of earth to the heavens and vowing that she’ll ‘never be hungry again’. He went on to marry a second (and last) time and had a large family which he relocated to Giverny where he ended his days among his Lily ponds. His eldest son even went on to marry one of his second wife’s children. Incest is best and all that.

Claude Monet, photo by Nadar 1899

This is not quite how I envisaged him  and I can sort of see his beard scraping along the canvas as he paints. You never know, maybe that’s how he got his effects. Along the same vein, I’ve always joked that perhaps he didn’t have very good eyesight which is why his paintings look the way they do (Philistine, moi?). It turns out I was half right. Whilst his eyesight was fine, he did develop cataracts in later life for which he underwent two surgeries. After surgery he found he could see certain ultraviolet wavelengths and even went back to repaint some of his paintings in bluer tones (see above lily painting).

He also has the honour of being the inspiration for the coinage of the term ‘impressionism’ by art critic, Louis Leroy from his painting ‘Impression, Sunrise’.

Impression, sunrise 1872/1873