The Late Monet: Always Innovating

"The Late Monet" was a very important, and very large, exhibit at the de Young Museum that finished its run on May 27. The strongest impression I got from the show was that far from being a placid old man sentimentalizing his garden in his dotage, Monet was a relentless experimenter and tireless innovator throughout his career.

Monet was 32 years old in 1876—and already and accomplished realist—when he painted Impression, Sunrise, which is the source for the name Impressionism, a movement that lasted only about 10 years, but had an enduring impact on painting and painters. Instead of carefully delineating forms, Monet vaguely indicated boats and water with broad, casual brushstrokes. His main concerns were the light and color in the scene.

Claude Monet, 1840-1926
Impression, Sunrise, 1873
Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris
WikiArt

For the next 10 years, Impressionism was all the rage in Paris, with many excellent painters being preoccupied with the effects of light and color, and the use of a variety of brushstrokes.

After traveling widely in search of subjects, in the 1880s Monet settled down with his family in a rural town not far from Paris called Giverny. There he turned much of his creativity toward landscaping, and created a large garden that became the only subject of his work.

"The Late Monet" presented works from around 1900, when Monet was 60; most of the works were from 1913 to 1926, Monet's final period. He died at the age of 86.

Monet's most famous subject is the water lily pond he created on his property, a subject he painted obsessively. The most amazing result is how different each is from the other. That is partly because Monet was observing the pond in different seasons and at different times of day. But the main difference is in the brushstrokes and the level of detail; every work is a painterly experiment.

Water Lilies, Reflections of Tall Grasses, ca. 1897
Private Collection
Photo by Jan Looper Smith, 2019

Water Lilies, 1906
The Art Institute of Chicago
Photo by Jan Looper Smith, 2019

Which of the vague forms represent real plants, and which patches of color are reflections of the sky? 

Water Lilies, 1914-1915
Portland Art Museum, Oregon
Photo by Jan Looper Smith, 2019

Some of the lily pads in this painting are barely indicated by one or two crude brushstrokes in an oval form. An unrecognizable yellow bloom is merely indicated by a few streaky brushstrokes. Or are those yellow strokes reflections of a plant hanging overhead? Some of the blue vertical strokes represent the plants growing beneath the surface, but other blue patches seem to be reflections of the sky. Monet merged different aspects of the scene into one flat, and highly decorative pattern.

Water Lilies, ca. 1914-1917
Fine Arts Museums, San Francisco
Photo by Jan Looper Smith, 2019

Monet suggested the distance between one clump of lilies and another merely by lightening his colors and making his forms even more vague in the distance. Is that patch of sky in the upper section real or reflected?

Water Lilies, 1915-1917
Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris
Photo by Jan Looper Smith, 2019

Unless the light is just right, the large violet patch on the lower right of this canvas looks unfinished and muddy. When you look at it directly, the downward streaking brushstrokes seem to indicate the scene beneath the water, but the beautifully modulated color suggests reflections of the sky.

Does this painting show the light of late afternoon? Do the downward streaks and bluish colors suggest a melancholy mood?

Water Lilies, 1915-1917
Fondation Beyeler, Basel, Switzerland
Photo by Jan Looper Smith, 2019

This bright color combination and balanced composition is immediately attractive, but very vague. Painting reflections gave Monet an excuse to be vague and formless. Color and light were his abiding concerns.

Water Lilies, ca. 1916-1919
McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas
Photo by Jan Looper Smith, 2019

We accept this as a lily pond, but why? The lily pads are pinkish, and the blooms are like roses. All the loose brushstrokes around them are vague; only the variation in color gives the picture a sense of spatial depth, and suggests a shady dell beneath overhanging trees.

Water Lilies, 1916-1919
Fine Arts Museums, San Francisco
Photo by Jan Looper Smith, 2019

This painting is so abstract and dark that the viewer might not recognize it as waterlilies in a pond. What are those white streaks? Are they underwater plants or reflections of something overhead? What are those purple splotches? Are you sure this is Monet?

Water-Lily Pond, 1917-1919
Private Collection
Photo by Jan Looper Smith, 2019

Water Lilies (Agapanthus), ca. 1915-1926
Saint Louis Museum of Art
Photo by Jan Looper Smith, 2019

With its soft and appealing blend of colors and its almost total lack of definition, this work seems to express a state of heavenly grace or pure bliss. 

During the same time period as the water lily paintings, Monet depicted a variety of other plants in his garden. But he wasn't interested in botanical exactness. Each work has painterly concerns.

Day Lilies, 1914-1917
Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris
Photo by Jan Looper Smith, 2019

The painterly concern in this work is those long green brushstrokes, arching so convincingly like the leaves of a day lily. The delicate red and purple flowers emerge energetically from the plant. The gorgeous pink and blue background is not tied to any reality.

Irises, ca. 1914-1917
National Galley, London
Photo by Jan Looper Smith, 2019

The dominant painterly value here is the bold, almost geometric composition. The subject also gave Monet a chance to work with long brushstrokes, each one so plant-like. The composition is flattened, as though this were a detail of a much larger overhead view.

Yellow Irises, 1917-1919
Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris
Photo by Jan Looper Smith, 2019

Those joyous upswinging green strokes rushing toward a bright and buoyant sky express the luxuriant growth of springtime. This is sort of a worm's eye view, which makes it seem fresh and bold.

Another frequent subject of Monet's was a Japanese-style arching footbridge. It was Monet's private touch to shelter the bridge with a wisteria arbor.

Monet, right in his garden at Giverny, 1922
Wikipedia

Here's a photo of Monet on his bridge late in life. With plantings along the railing and an arbor overhead, the bridge doesn't look very Japanese any more.

The Japanese Footbridge
Giverny.com

Here's a modern photo of the bridge, with arbor above and weeping willows behind.

The Japanese Footbridge, 1899
National Gallery, Washington D.C.
Photo by Jan Looper Smith, 2019

Just before the turn of the century, Monet did a depiction of the footbridge that is fairly realistic. The forms are definite, the color is springtime fresh, and the depth of space is rendered convincingly. But the dark horizontal green bands—are they underwater views or reflections of the surrounding plants? Monet loved his tricks of perception.

The Japanese Bridge, 1919
Kunstmuseum, Basel, Switzerland
Photo by Jan Looper Smith, 2019

In this version from twenty years later, Monet gave the barest hint of the forms of the bridge and the plants and the water. He reduced the scene to an essay of greens, coming ever closer to nature's own elusive green. It seems to express the abundant growth of springtime.

The Japanese Bridge, 1918-1924
Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris
Photo by Jan Looper Smith, 2019

Later in the year, maybe early summer, the wisteria arbor comes into bloom, and the garden becomes a riot of color. This is one of many paintings by Monet that seems too red and contrasty. This coloration is generally seen as a "fault" and explained by the fact that he had cataracts at the time he painted it. However, it is also significant that European painting had already completed the period of Fauvism, when everyone was experimenting with the use of color to express feelings and emotions. The brushstrokes are also wild and crazy, each one distinct against the background. This painting seems to express the intense heat and humidity of the garden in high summer weather, and to express it better than "realistic" forms and colors. The careless scribbles, streaks and jabs of color also seem to express anger, perhaps because his vision was letting him down.

The Japanese Bridge, ca. 1923-1925
Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minnesota
Photo by Jan Looper Smith, 2019

The intense reds and yellows bursting from dark shadows immediately suggest anger, as do the smudged and layered brushstrokes. But the colors also relate to autumn when most of the leaves in his beloved garden turned vivid colors, just before withering. The painting also contains a painterly trick of perception. If you look at this painting carelessly or from the wrong direction, it appears to be random, messy and flat; but if you get just the right angle, the image conveys amazing depth. The longer you look at it, the more "realistic" it seems.

Another frequent subject for Monet was the rose arbor in his garden. 

Flowering Arches, Giverny, 1913
Phoenix Art Museum, Arizona
Photo by Jan Looper Smith, 2019

This version of the rose arbor is very descriptive. There is a clear division between the land and the pond, and between the sky and the reflections of the sky. In addition to the rose arbor, the painting gives us recognizable water lilies and iris. The painting is so pretty in its coloration and symmetrical in its composition that it is almost like a commercial product.

Path under the Rose Arches, Giverny, 1920-1922
Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris
Photo by Jan Looper Smith, 2019

Less than ten years later, Monet took a more modern approach to the rose arbor. Instead of looking at it placidly from a distance, he got right under the flowering vines. His coloration is again the tones of autumn and anger. Not only is his vision failing, but his garden is going dormant in the autumn weather. In a trick of perception, from certain angles this painting is just messy and arbitrary like the overdone crayon drawing of an angry child, but from the right angle you get an impression of tremendous depth, looking down the arbor with the path rising to meet the horizon at the end of the tunnel. The forms don't seem to matter as much as the pattern of shadows and brights that creates the feeling of a mysterious tunnel.

After his cataracts were surgically removed, Monet returned to a more normal and harmonious palette. Instead of being angry scribbles, his brushstrokes became more descriptive and true to nature.

During the First World War, Monet painted a series of images of a weeping willow tree. It has been suggested that the willow's drooping foliage represents fallen soldiers.This subject also gave the painter a different kind of problem in light and shadow, and represents his passion for painterly experimentation as much as his wartime sadness.

Weeping Willow, 1918
Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio
Photo by Jan Looper Smith, 2019

The willow tree is on the left of the canvas, with a murky recess on the right. Judging by the contrast between brights and darks, it appears to represent the late afternoon of a sunny day in the summer.

Weeping Willow, 1918-1919
Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, Texas
Photo by Jan Looper Smith, 2019

This autumnal view of the weeping willow is expanded to reveal shadowy recesses on either side of the brightly lighted trunk.

Some of Monet's late works are shocking and even repellant at first glance; but as you dwell on them, you begin to understand the painterly experimentation that motivated them. Even when they weren't popular, Monet's late works influenced several generations of painters to follow, and therefore the works of his old age still seem quite edgy and modern.