In the first photo, Monet is 20 years old. His painting, View from Rouelles, was painted in 1858 when Monet was only 18. This was his first well-known painting, done while on an excursion from his coastal hometown of Le Havre with his mentor Eugene Boudin, who was 16 years older. View from Rouelles is an exceptionally sophisticated painting for Monet's being such a young artist. It clearly shows his early ability and interest in capturing the essence of light.

The second photo of Monet was taken in 1905 when he was 65, standing next to his water-lily pond in Giverny. The painting below, Water-Lily Pond, was done in 1918 when Monet was 78.

At that point, Monet was no longer able to trek over the hills of the Normandy coast to seek out rugged locales, and his eyesight was troubled by cataracts. Yet his work shows the same interest in light and color he had shown as a young artist. Now more evolved, his work showed a mastery and sensitivity gained only through years and years of experience.

It was his mentor Eugene Boudin who introduced Monet to oils and schooled him in the work of the Barbizon painters. Monet quickly learned to love painting outdoors, and he explored the nature of light and color. He was especially influenced by the work of Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot.

When Monet got to Paris in the 1860's, he met other art students who shared an enthusiasm for the teachings of the Barbizon painters, including fellow students Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley and Frederick Bazille, who became the core group of the Impressionists.

Monet held the Barbizon painters in reverence the rest of his life, especially Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot. In 1897 when Monet was 57, he was asked about the birth of Impressionism. He said, "There is only one master here, Corot. We are nothing compared to him, nothing."

Paris provided many locales for plein air painting, and newly established train routes offered day trips to locations and resort towns outside the city in the French countryside.

"The Impressionists," including Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, and Sisley, organized the Anonymous Society of Painters, Sculptors and Engravers to exhibit independently. The group's first exhibition in 1874 included Monet's Impression Sunrise. Art critic Louis Leroy borrowed part of Monet's painting's title and coined the term "Impressionism," his way of disparaging the entire exhibition and the Society. What an all time miscalculation. Instead of being insulted, "the Impressionists" adopted the name and its fame has grown ever since.

Like his fellow Impressionists, Monet did not shy from the urban scenes of Paris, yet his figures, although centrally placed, are not the center of attention. For Monet, the landscape was supreme. He places importance on the sky, the haze, the smoke, above that of the figures and structures in the scene. Buildings are not shown in architectural detail and trees do not have defined leaves or branches. In Monet's compositions, they loom vertically above scenes of people, like walls of a canyon alongside a river.

Monet's model and the mother of his firstborn child in 1867 was Camille Doncieux. They were married on June 28, 1870, just before the Franco-Prussian War. To escape the war, Claude and Camille first stayed in Holland for four months and then lived briefly in London.

Monet was thrilled with the Dutch town of Zaandam, its criss-crossing canals, windmills, colorful houses and boats. He wrote to Pissarro saying, "It is marvelous for painting here, houses of all colors, hundreds of windmills and ravishing boats."

Between 1870 and 1880, Monet visited Holland several times, creating 42 paintings, most done in Amsterdam and Zaandam and their surrounding areas.

Years after it was painted, Monet's The Landing Stage was believed to be a pleasant scene along the Seine River in France. But thanks to a distinctive house behind the woman silhouetted against her pink parasol, the scene has been identified as being along the Zaan River in Holland.

Later visits to Holland included Monet's paintings of tulip fields. Monet delighted in the smears of brilliant color. Standing in front of Tulip Fields at Sassenheim, I couldn't help but wonder what fun Monet had painting this scene.

In December of 1871, Claude Monet and his wife Camille returned to France from their stay in Holland and London. They settled in Argenteuil, a 15 minute train ride from Paris. Argenteuil was a weekend haven for Parisians, a pastoral and serene setting next to the Seine offering Monet natural scenes with boats, water reflections and calm. It foreshadows his later moves to other river towns, Vetheuil and Giverny, as Monet retreated ever farther from Paris into the French countryside.

Monet was only 32 when he and Camille rented a house in Argenteuil. The young couple was poor, but these were happy years for them. The Artist's House in Argenteuil shows Camille at the front door while their son Jean plays with a hoop in the garden.

Monet did have some success at this time, winning a silver medal in Le Havre, but because he was piled high in debt, creditors seized many of Monet's paintings. They were rescued (purchased) by a friend and patron, a shipping merchant named Gaudibert who was also a patron of Monet's mentor, Eugene Boudin. In 1872, the art dealer Paul Durand Ruel who supported the Impressionist painters provided enough sales to give Monet enough economic stability to remain in Argenteuil with no big money worries.

In 1873, Monet purchased a small boat and constructed his floating studio. He used it to paint natural riverbank scenes and once invited Edouard Manet and his wife to pose on the boat while Monet did a portrait of the couple. Manet returned the favor and painted a portrait of Claude and Camille on the boat.

The Geese is an example of the perspective his boat studio provided. Had he painted these same geese from shore, it would have been a totally different composition.

In April of 1873, Monet met with Pissarro and Sisley to discuss founding an artists' association. This lead to the Societe Anonyme Cooperative d'Artists which became a reality in December of 1873.

In April of 1874, the association's first exhibition was held in Paris where art critic Louis Leroy disparagingly referred to the group as "impressionists."

In 1876, Camille became ill with tuberculosis. She gave birth to their second son Michael in March of 1878. The birth further weakened Camille, already in fading health.

To care for Camille and keep financially afloat, the family moved to Vetheuil where they shared a house with the family of Ernest and Alice Hoschede. Ernest and Alice had been comparatively wealthy, owning a successful department store in Paris and they were also among Monet's patrons. But in 1877, Ernest Hoschede went bankrupt, and compromises had to be made. Sharing living spaces was a way of coping with their new financial reality.

As Camille's nursing needs increased, Alice Hoschede helped care for Camille and provided child care for her son and her newborn. It is suspected that Claude and Alice had an affair as early as 1876. Regardless of whether or not this is true, Alice supported Claude while befriending and caring for Camille. It was an unlikely family arrangement, but a natural one for them given the circumstances.

Artistically during this period, Monet became withdrawn. He painted not only to keep up the family income, but also for his personal therapy. He work was more introspective, painting more pure landscapes with few figures. Even when he did use figures, they were indistinct. In The Meadow at Vetheuil, 1879, the children playing in the Meadow seem swallowed up by their surroundings. It may reflect Monet's feelings about his life, engulfed by problems beyond his control.

Later in 1878, Camille was diagnosed with uterine cancer. She was ill for months, passing away on September 5, 1879, at the young age of 32. Claude, seven years older, was only 39.

Claude was understandably depressed during Camille's illness and the months and years after her death. He and his children continued to live with Alice Hoschede and her children. They moved briefly to Poissy and later to Giverny where Claude rented the house he would eventually purchase and remain in for the rest of his life.

While Alice lived with Monet, her husband spent longer and longer periods away in Paris. Ernest Hoschede did not live a healthy lifestyle, drinking and eating to excess and suffering gout. As his health declined, Alice moved to Paris to care for him. He died a poor man in 1891.

At the request of Ernest and Alice's children, Ernest was buried at Giverny, with Monet paying all funeral expenses. Alice and Claude were married the next year, 1892. The couple remained married for nearly 19 years until Alice's death in 1911.

From his mid-twenties to his late 50's, Monet enjoyed painting white winter scenes. The most famous, entitled The Magpie, resides at the Musee d'Orsay, and is a favorite of millions of Monet fans. (Not in this exhibit.)

Monet loved the subtlety of winter light, and nuances of color as light is reflected and refracted in the air and by the snow and ice. Monet believed white is the most complex of all colors, and demonstrated it time and time again.

In 1895 at the age of 45, he traveled to Norway for a two-month long stay with the purpose of capturing snow blanketed views of the countryside. During his stay, he painted 29 Norwegian canvases. He traveled with Jacques Hoshede, Alice's son, who was in Oslo for business.

Having grown up in Le Havre where the Seine meets the Atlantic, Monet had an inborn love of water. From his earliest memories and throughout his life Monet pondered the properties of water and the effect it had with light.

After Camille died in 1879, Monet traveled to the coast many times, visiting the coastal towns north of Le Havre, such as Etretat, Fecamp, Pourville, Petites-Dalles, and a small island off the coast off Le Havre, Belle Ile.

He was fascinated by the coast and the interactions of rock, sea and sky. Unlike his tranquil Seine River scenes, his paintings of cliffs and whitecapped waters show nature's full force. Often, he would look at cliffs from a high vantage point to maximize the dramatic interchange of land, sea and sky.

Sometimes, he did not venture out of his hotel, choosing to paint the boats he saw from his hotel window in Etretat.

Monet visited the coast near Etretat in Normandy four consecutive years, 1983-86. He was captivated by the drama of vertical cliffs meeting an everchanging sky and sea. He created more than fifty paintings from these locations.

In September of 1886, Monet spent two weeks on Belle Ile, the largest of the Breton Islands off the coast from Le Havre. He went to the island looking for different atmospheres for his paintings of the shore. The uncompromising landscape with its constantly changing weather made it difficult for Monet to reach the locations which interested him the most. Sheer cliffs and dizzying overhangs did not deter him. He would set up his easel on the edge of the void and remain there, stubbornly painting on as the winds blew.

It was in 1883 at the age of 43 that Monet first discovered Bordighera on a trip to the Mediterranean coast with his friend and fellow painter Auguste Renoir. On their way to Italy, Monet and Renoir paid a visit to Paul Cezanne at l'Estaque, a small fishing port outside of Marseille where he resided. They then spent several weeks in Bordighera, a small Italian town just across the border from the French Riviera. Monet complained that the local vegetation was hard to paint, no isolated trees or vast spaces. But he was fascinated by the kaleidoscope of colors. The light bouncing off the Mediterranean was unlike any he had experienced before. He felt he needed jewel-like colors to accurately render the buildings, palm trees and azure water.

Monet returned to the French Riviera in 1888, visiting the old town of Antibes. Monet's art dealer in Paris, Paul Durand-Ruel suggested that Monet visit this city. Monet loved the light but it also troubled him. From Antibes, he wrote a letter to Alice saying, "How beautiful it is here, to be sure, but how difficult to paint! I can see what I want to do quite clearly but I'm not there yet. It's so clear and pure in its pinks and blues that the slightest misjudged stroke looks like a smear of dirt." In spite of Monet's misgivings, another Parisian art dealer, Theo Van Gogh, bought ten of Monet's Antibes paintings.

In 1908 and 1909, Claude and Alice made two railroad trips to Venice, Italy. They had an especially good time there. As with his 1883 first trip to the Riviera with Renoir, the light in Venice was extraordinary. Monet loved the quality of light in the reflections offered in the Venice canals. Monet didn't realize it then, but the second trip in 1909 would mark the last time he would travel. For the next 17 years, the rest of his life, he stayed at Giverny.

He wrote, "The fog in London assumes all sorts of colors; there are black, brown, yellow, green purple fogs and the interest in painting is to get the objects as seen through all these fogs."

In 1883, Claude and Alice rented the Cider Press House in Giverny, a town not far from Vernon on the Seine about 50 miles west of Paris. By 1890, Monet bought the property and surrounding land and remained there until his death in December of 1926.

Once he owned the land, Monet set out to create his gardens with rose covered archways and his famed lily pond with its Japanese bridge formed by redirected water from the Epte River, a tributary of the Seine.

Prior to owning the home during the years 1883-1890, Monet painted natural scenes nearby.

The Peony Garden done in 1887 was one of Monet's first paintings done on what would soon become his property. It was done before he began transforming the landscape with his gardens and lily pond.

From 1883 through to his death in 1926, most of Monet's paintings were done within 3 kilometers of his home. Previously, he had paintings series of paintings, including the the prominent structures of the British Parliament Building and bridges of London and the Rouen Cathedral in France.

Conventional wisdom would require Monet to paint something significant for a series. But Monet wanted to explore the colors and textures of a different structure, the grainstacks commonly found around his home in the late 19th century.

These grainstacks were put together to protect the wheat. Prior to modern combines, farmers stored unthreshed grains by placing them beneath thatched roofs made of straw to keep them dry as they awaited threshing machines to visit the area. Normally, the stacks were constructed in July and the threshing machines did not arrive until Spring. This allowed Monet to paint them in the variety of light and atmosphere offered through the change of the seasons.

Monet would often visit the fields of a neighboring farmer, Monsieur Queruel, and bring along several canvases and easels. As the light conditions would change, he would work on a different canvas. Back in his studio, he would revise his plein air impressions, working on multiple easels as he developed the entire series.

In 1896, Monet began a series of 18 paintings entitled Mornings on the Seine done near the confluence of the Seine and the Epte Rivers. He would rise at dawn in order to catch the changing effects of light as the sun came up.

He resurrected his floating studio, first used in 1872 in Argenteuil. He converted a flat-bottomed boat into a floating studio from which he made his observations and began his canvases, capturing the nuances and dances of light, reflection and atmosphere.

On the boat, he worked on numerous canvases, numbering each one and keeping them stored into grooves built into the boat. Back in his studio, as he had done with his other series, he worked on multiple paintings at one time. His gardeners had an extra duty, assisting Monet as he loaded and unloaded canvases to and from his floating studio.

Two of Monet's stepdaughters, Suzanne and Blanche Hoschede, are shown here in a "Norwegian," a wooden rowboat popular in France in the late 19th century. The figures occupy the upper portion of this composition with the water dominating the larger lower half. Monet unifies the scene with the long diagonal line of the long reddish oar.

Monet's Water Lilies (or Nympheas) is a series of approximately 250 oil paintings done during the last 30 years of the artist's life at his lily pond at Giverny. For Monet, his lily pond was central to his art and his life. He expressed this thought by saying,"Water lilies are an extension of my life. Without the water lilies, I cannot live, as I am without art."

Similarly, on another occasion, Monet explained how his fascination with water lilies began, "It took me some time to understand my water lilies… I cultivated them with no thought of painting them… One does not fully appreciate a landscape in one day… And then, suddenly, I had a revelation of the magic of my pond. I took my palette. From this moment, I have had almost no other model."

When Monet was in his early 60's, he developed cataracts which dramatically affected Monet's paintings. He visited a leading eye expert in London, a German ophthalmologist named Richard Liebreich, who held the ophthalmology chair at St. Thomas Hospital and had published an article on the effect of eye disease experienced by J. M. W. Turner and William Mulready.

Dr. Liebreich prescribed new glasses for Monet, and recommended he have cataract surgery on his right eye, but Monet refused. He continued painting, but complained that colors no longer had the same intensity for him. His reds began to look muddy and his paintings were generally darker. He strived to combat the changes in his vision by labeling his tubes of paint and keeping them in strict order on his palette. He wore a big straw hat to deal with the glare of bright sunlight.

Monet's friend, the former French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau, as well as his doctor, urged Monet to consider cataract surgery. But Monet feared surgery, based in large part to what had happened to fellow artists Honore Daumier and Mary Cassatt whose cataract surgeries had been unsuccessful. Monet argued, "I prefer to make the most of my poor sight, and even give up painting if necessary, but at least be able to see a little of these things I love."

The Denver Art Museum's Claude Monet: The Truth of Nature runs through February 2, 2020, and is the only U.S. location for this exhibition.

It includes more than 120 of Monet's paintings done over 60 years with works done in Holland, Norway, England, the French and Italian Rivieras, Venice, as well as works done closer to Monet's homes, Paris, the Normandy Coast, and along the Seine, including many works done at his home in Giverny.

The exhibition includes paintings donated by the Musee d'Orsay and the Musee Marmottan in Paris, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Metropolitan Museum of New York and many from private collections.

Bentonville, AR
Crystal Bridges
Museum of American Art

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