MONET THE GARDEN PAINTINGS
Claude Monet (1840-1926) went to live in the village of Giverny in 1883. The landscape painter swapped his nomadic lifestyle for a reclusive existence, devoting himself exclusively to painting his impressive garden. He spent years working, isolated and undisturbed, on his magnum opus: a large decorative ensemble depicting the reflections on the surface of his water lily pond. Monet regarded his Grandes Décorations as his legacy, and in the course of the project he painted hundreds of canvases that he never sold or exhibited. When Monet died in 1926 he was a celebrated artist, but his paintings from Giverny did not receive a positive reception when they were posthumously revealed. Critics and art historians regarded the water lilies as an inferior element of his oeuvre, the work of a blind old man. This perception eventually changed, thanks in part to an exhibition at the current Kunstmuseum Den Haag which, for the first time, presented Monet’s water lilies as true masterpieces. These paintings have now become Monet’s trademark, and his most beloved work. HANNIBAL
This lavishly illustrated publication focuses on the period Monet spent in Giverny and on the creation of his final masterpiece. It also charts how Monet’s water lilies have been received over the years. With essays by Frouke van Dijke, Astrid Goubert, Marianne Mathieu and Benno Tempel.
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MONET THE GARDEN PAINTINGS
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Claude Monet in front of his house in Giverny, part of a set of six pictures taken in Giverny in the Spring of 1921 for L’Illustration, MusÊe d'Orsay, Paris
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[Fig. 18] Monet at his water lily pond, 1905 Gelatin silver print, 17.7 x 12.8 cm RMN-Grand Palais, Paris
‘The essence of the motif is the mirror of the water, whose appearance alters every moment, thanks to the patches of sky that are reflected in it, and give it light and movement… So many factors, undetectable to the initiated eye, transform the colouring and distort the planes of the water.’ CL AUDE MONET
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[Fig. 6 & 7] Monets Water Lilies at the Orangerie, Paris, 1927 Gelatin silver print, 24 x 30 cm Médiathèque de l’A rchitecture et du Patrimoine, Charenton-le-Pont
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[Fig. 16] Exhibition of Emile GallĂŠ, c. 1900
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THOMPSON
In 1961, the Haags Gemeentemuseum – now called Kunstmuseum The Hague – bought Wisteria, a huge painting that Monet had created in Giverny shortly after the First World War. Prior to the acquisition Wisteria had already been shown in the Hague, under the French title Glycine, at the notorious exhibition of the private art collection of George David Thompson (1899–1956).2 For many visitors, Monet’s painting stole the show. ‘Entering this exhibition is in itself an unforgettable sensation. […] By Renoir, the large bronze sculpture Washerwoman. […] Beside it on the wall, a painting by Claude Monet, Glycine, flowers like an eternal smile […].’3 Thompson, a self-made millionaire from Pittsburgh, had amassed his fortune on Wall Street and then in the steel industry. In 1960, he sent his art collection on an international tour, starting at the Guggenheim in New York, then Kunstmuseum Düsseldorf, Kunsthaus Zurich and the Haags Gemeentemuseum, ending at the Galleria d’Arte Moderna in Turin. In a certain sense it was a farewell tour, as it was known by
then that the impressive array of masterpieces by major names such as Picasso, Giacometti, Mondrian and Léger was to be broken up. Thompson’s collection was for sale, and the travelling exhibition was the showcase. The selection of paintings and sculptures was the result of 25 years of hunting, exchanging and haggling. Thompson had a reputation for driving a hard bargain. At the time of the exhibition, a character sketch in Life magazine entitled ‘A Millionaire Amid His Moderns’ described him as ‘possibly the shrewdest, wiliest and most tenacious operator in the art market today’.4 To make a deal with a pit bull like Thompson, gallery owners or collectors had to submit to an endless cat-and-mouse game from which the steel magnate derived the greatest pleasure. He would not take no for an answer, and money was no object. After a work by Cézanne had gone under the hammer for more than $600,000 – an alarmingly high price on the art market at the time – Thompson was asked to what extent this huge sum of money could truly represent the value of a painting. ‘There are many who have $616,000,
2° The Thompson Collection of Pittsburgh was at the Haags Gemeentemuseum from 17 February to 9 April 1961. 3° Anonymous, ‘Mr. Thompson reist de wereld rond met miljoenencollectie’, De Waarheid, 1 April 1961. 4° Dorothy Seiberling, ‘A Millionaire Amid His Moderns’, Life, 16 May 1960, p. 86. 5° David Thompson, ‘Voorwoord’, in: Collectie Thompson uit Pittsburgh, exh. cat. (Haags Gemeentemuseum), The Hague, 1961. 6° Seiberling 1960 (note 4), p. 91.
7° From our arts editor, ‘Voor het laatst te zien in Den Haag. Thompsoncollectie: Markant beeld van de moderne kunst’, De Telegraaf, 11 March 1961, p. 9. 8° Louis Wijsenbeek, ‘Ten geleide’, in: Collectie Thompson uit Pittsburgh, exh. cat. (Haags Gemeentemuseum), The Hague, 1961. 9° See letter from Louis Wijsenbeek to the Municipal Executive of The Hague Municipal Authority, Purchase from the Thompson Collection, 22 June 1961, no. 2028.
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but there is but one who possesses this marvellous painting by Cézanne,’ he replied.5 But in 1959 he suddenly decided to dispose of his entire collection. His son had been killed in a car accident shortly before. Thompson hoped to bid farewell to his grief by starting a new collection with a clean slate. ‘I think these things are holding me back in an era I don’t want to remember,’ he candidly admitted.6 As befits a true American philanthropist, he decided to donate his entire collection, plus his home Stone’s Throw, to Pittsburgh, on condition that the city invest enough money in maintaining the collection and developing an art centre. Pittsburgh, a place that traditionally had not had a great interest in modern art, politely declined the offer. Probably not without some resentment, Thompson immediately put everything up for sale. There were plenty of other interested parties, however. ‘It must be a torment for the director of the Haags Gemeentemuseum, Mr Wijsenbeek, to have the renowned Thompson collection within the walls of his museum, knowing that it is to be sold (and indeed is already partly sold) and realising that he will perhaps be able to buy only one or two works,’ wrote De Telegraaf newspaper at the time of the exhibition in The Hague.7 Louis Wijsenbeek (1912–1985) anticipated such a possible purchase by dreaming in his foreword to the exhibition catalogue, albeit somewhat cautiously, that ‘some of the masterpieces that he [Thompson] has preserved with such love, might be included in our collection here in The Hague’.8 And indeed, he managed to obtain 400,000 guilders from the municipal council in order to purchase a number of works from the collection.9 The money was not transferred to the American’s bank account, however, but to that of Ernst Beyeler (1921–2010). Even before the exhibition tour had begun, the Swiss art collector had bought up most of Thompson’s collection. Wijsenbeek therefore sent his wish list to Beyeler; it included two abstract paintings by Ben Nicholson and El Lissitzky, and a number of small sculptures by French artists Henri Laurens and Germaine Richier. These were crumbs compared with the piece for which the majority of the purchase sum was reserved, and which was the main attraction for Wijsenbeek, who had co-organised a major Monet retrospective in 1952: Monet’s Wisteria.
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[Fig. 2] ‘The Thompson Collection of Pittsburgh’ exhibition, Haags Gemeentemuseum, 1961 Kunstmuseum Den Haag [Fig. 3] Yale Joel (1919-2006), Art collector G. David Thompson examining a sculpture The LIFE Picture Collection
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Monet’s garden was inspired by the traditional Japanese garden, examples of which could be seen in many places in Europe in the nineteenth century. He deliberately chose exotic plants such as water lilies, bamboo and wisteria, and had a typical Japanese bridge built over the narrowest part of the pond. Around 1900, shortly after his water lily pond had been created, the arched bridge provided the centrepiece for a series of paintings. Monet returned to the subject of this series after the First World War. However, the new series was very different from the detailed pictures he had completed almost 20 years before. By now, the wooden bridge was topped by a trellis over which various types of wisteria grew, producing an exuberant display from spring onwards. But Monet’s technique had also changed dramatically. The bridge, sky and water are barely distinguishable from one another here. The structure of the bridge has been engulfed in a confusion of rapidly applied dabs of red, green, yellow and blue paint. Despite the expressive technique, in this series Monet temporarily returned to painting on canvases of a more modest size, having had the luxury of painting on canvases measuring several metres for many years.
The Footbridge over the Water Lily Pond, 1919 Oil on canvas, 65.6 x 106.4 cm, Kunstmuseum Basel Acquired with a loan from the City Basel and the support of the Max Geldner-Stiftung in 1986
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The Japanese Bridge, 1918-24 Oil on canvas, 89 x 115.5 cm Fondation Beyeler, Riehen/Basel, Beyeler Collection