Claude Monet

Claude Monet (b. 1840–d. 1926) is the artist most closely associated with the term “Impressionism.” His paintings are among the most frequently viewed on the Internet, ranking fourth after Picasso, van Gogh, and Leonardo. Monet’s paintings command high prices at auction and his works are continuously featured in exhibitions around the world. Despite the international currency of Monet’s work, the scholarly literature since the mid-20th century is characterized by significant differences in interpretation from formalism to social history, feminism to psychoanalysis. It is not possible to include every worthy item here, but the annotated entries will orient the reader to the most significant trends. The point of view espoused with regard to these divergent perspectives is that they all enrich the literature on the artist because “the interminable reinterpretations to which [the work of art] is legitimately susceptible change it only into itself” (p. 139, The Merleau-Ponty Aesthetics Reader: Philosophy and Painting, ed. Galen A. Johnson and trans. Michael B. Smith. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1993). Monet began his career during the Second French Empire as a Realist painter under the influence of the older artists Courbet and Manet whose common goal was the representation of modern life. Monet achieved modest success at the principal art venue of the era, the Salon exhibition, with a pair of seascapes in 1865 and a large-scale portrait of a woman of fashion in 1866. However, Monet failed to complete for the Salon in 1866 or to have accepted in 1867 his attempts to achieve monumental representations of modern women and men engaged in public and private recreation. Such failures at the Salon may have encouraged Monet to organize in 1874 an independent exhibition along with his colleagues Pissarro, Degas, Cézanne, Renoir, and Morisot that has come to be known as the first Impressionist exhibition. It was during this nascent stage of the Third French Republic that Monet incurred the ridicule of the critics for his now-iconic painting, Impression, Sunrise, which gave the movement its name. The group held seven more independent exhibitions between 1876 and 1886, but by then Monet was already moving away from group exhibitions toward the solo presentation of ensembles of works at commercial galleries in Paris between 1888 and 1909, such as the Grainstacks, Cathedrals, and series of London and Venice. The dispersed monumentality of Monet’s series paintings eventually coalesced after World War I in the mural decorations of Water Lilies, posthumously installed at the Orangerie, now one of the most visited museums in Paris. The refurbishment of his home and gardens at Giverny and the exhibition of his final sketches and paintings at the Musée Marmottan Monet have made of these places shrines of art and tourism that attract thousands of visitors each year.