If Claude Monet had his way, he and his wife Alice would never have visited Venice. He would have been content to remain in Giverny.

But Alice insisted and easily won the disagreement. Acting on an invitation from her good friend Mary Young Hunter, the Monets joined the Hunters at their rented Venetian palazzo. They planned a two-week vacation. Claude, ever the prepared artist, packed a traveling painting kit and sent it ahead.

On October 1, 1908, they embarked on their train trip from Paris. Claude was 68 years old, still in good health, but at a low point in his illustrious career.

He had grown disillusioned with his water lily paintings after receiving negative feedback from his dealer, Paul Durand-Ruel, who doubted Monet’s push toward greater abstraction, saying the works “simply didn’t work” and were not marketable.

Throughout his career, Monet had returned again and again to water—the Seine, the Normandy coast, and the pond at Giverny. Since the 1850s, he had followed the advice of his teacher Eugène Boudin, a painter of seascapes and harbor scenes. He also drew inspiration from Charles-François Daubigny, who painted expansive river views from a boat.

By the 1880s, Monet had become increasingly preoccupied with what he called “the envelope”—the ephemeral, colored atmosphere surrounding his subject. As he explained, “Other painters paint a bridge, a house, a boat… I want to paint the air in which the bridge, the house, and the boat are to be found.” Whether along the misty Seine or in the fog of London, Monet sought to capture this “envelope,” where objects and their shifting reflections dissolve into luminous color.

In 1903, Monet returned to London for a final push on the atmospheric paintings he had begun a few years earlier, working from rooms at the Savoy Hotel overlooking the Thames.

He focused on the Waterloo Bridge and the Houses of Parliament, chasing the fleeting effects of fog, light, and smoke. As with other painting series, Monet developed a working technique where he would often juggle multiple canvases as conditions shifted by the minute.

By this point, the architecture itself was "the envelope," the mood and atmosphere dissolving it. Much of the work would later be refined back in his studio at Giverny.

The exhibition included two striking Venetian scenes by Canaletto, painted more than a century and a half before Monet’s arrival in 1908. Their immense scale and intricate detail were astonishing.

Clearly captivated, a museum visitor standing beside me exclaimed to her companion, “I know what I came for, but now I know what I’m going to take away!”

I suspect Monet would not have agreed.

Years earlier at the Louvre, he had been overheard remarking on a Canaletto painting: “Look, he does not even put in the reflections of the boats!” He continued, “Venice is there, very present and recognizable, but it is not in the foreground, built, sculpted, inventoried; it is suspended in the mist and in a distance of space.”

Camille Corot visited Venice in 1828 and again in 1834. His first trip was brief—a quick glimpse of the city, during which he completed five small plein air studies. When he returned in 1834, he produced a more finished composition, captivated by the transparency of the salt air and the brilliance of the light.

Renoir’s Venetian painting was not initially well received. One critic dismissed it as “ferocious daubs.” Today, however, it is recognized as a vivid and distinctive interpretation of the city’s atmosphere.

In Venice, Monet rediscovered his lifelong pursuit of painting his subjects "in the envelope." Monet was transfixed by the city’s Renaissance architecture, its reflections shimmering on the surface of the canals, animated by the angled brilliance of moisture laden Mediterranean light.

Here, he found a new direction, a new muse. The experience revitalized him. When he returned to Giverny, he approached his lily pond with renewed clarity and purpose.

Monet’s own Venetian works depict architecture, light, water, and reflections, but notably, no people.

Of The Red House, painted along a quiet side canal, Monet wrote, “I am doing a few canvases just in case, to preserve the memory of it.” The painting was not included in his 1912 Venice exhibition at Galerie Bernheim-Jeune.

The Rio della Salute is one of only two small-canal motifs he painted in Venice.

The palazzi—opulent residences built by wealthy merchants and nobles as early as the 13th century, served both as lavish homes and working warehouses for Venice’s thriving commercial class. Situated along major canals, they featured water-facing façades and paline, the striped mooring poles for gondolas.

The Doge’s Palace once housed the seat of Venetian power, its ruler in opulent style, government administrative offices, and far less comfortable, its prisons, complete with medieval torture chambers. Though its origins date to the 10th century, the present structure largely reflects 14th- and 15th-century construction, with later renovations following fires in 1574 and 1577. Its architecture is a blend of Venetian Gothic, Renaissance, and Byzantine elements.

Yet Monet was not interest in this history. His focus was its present appearance, as it was revealed as it was dissolving into light, atmosphere, and reflection. For him, the Doge’s Palace became a vehicle for exploring Venice’s shimmering waters and dense, luminous haze.

In 1907, the year before the trip to Venice, Paul Durand-Ruen cast doubts on Claude Monet's recent vertical water lily paintings. He thought they were not marketable. As a result, Monet delayed his planned exhibition. Although he had been highly successful, he now was lacking confidence and seeking a new direction.

Although Monet was innitially reluctant to visit Venice, once there, he decided to stay for two months. In Venice, he rediscovered his artistic direction. Inspired by its light, atmosphere, and reflections, he returned to Giverny and resumed work on his water lilies, this time to great critical acclaim, commercial success, and personal satisfaction.

Photo of La Gallerie Gernheim-Jeune in Paris, circa 1910
25 Boulevard de la Madeleine, Paris

Paul Durand-Ruel during his 1900 visit with Monet at Giverney

Monet said "Without Durand, we would have died of starvation, all of us impressionists. We owe him everything. He persisted, persevered, he risked bankruptcy twenty times over to support us.

Critiics expressed enthusiasm and news of Monet's Paris show of Venice paintings spread quickly throughout the art world, reaching New York and as far as San Francisco.

The Paris debut of Monet's Venice series was held at the famous Galerie Bernheim-Jeune. It confirmed that Monet, who was already one of the founders of Impressionism still "had it." He could still create a sensation.

Monet’s art dealer, Paul Durand-Ruel ensured that excitement reached American collectors. He often sailed across the Atlantic to New York promoting Monet’s work and cultivating museum patrons.

News of Monet’s Venetian triumph soon appeared in major American newspapers such as the New York Times and the New York Herald, and people in San Francisco read about it.

Enter Richard Dey de Ribcowsky

By 1917, the thirty-seven-year-old de Ribcowsky was already a seasoned and internationally trained painter. He moved west from New York and now maintained his studio in San Francisco. The city's art market was thriving following the City's 1915 Panama–Pacific International Exposition.

Why do Collectors Find De Ribcowsky Interesting Today?

Richard Dey de Ribcowsky is valued by collectors. He offers something increasingly appreciated in the art market: a rediscovered international painter whose work connects several artistic worlds.

His career links extensive European academic training, having been schooled in Romania, Florence and Petrograd (now St. Petersburg) and Paris with familiarity of the art worlds on three continents. He was familiar with the artists and styles of Europe's best painters, past and present. He exhibited internationally throughout Europe, Argentinia and Brazil, receiving awards at exhibitions in cities such as Sophia (Bulgaria), Moscow, Petrograd ( now St. Petersburg), Odessa, Buenos Aires, Montevideo (Uruguay) and Rio de Janeiro.

In 1904, he sailed to Buenos Aires, Argentina where he helped found their Academie des Beaux Arts. By 1910, he was on the move again, this time to New York to the vast and expanding American Art market.

By 1916, he set his sights on California, eager to bring his talents to San Francisco. As early as 1918, he left San Francisco, moving south to Los Angeles, offering his paintings for a growingly sophisticated Southern California market. For collectors interested in California painting, de Ribcowsky's experience offered a tantelizingly rich mix of the best of European art training infused with many experiences of international travel.

His paintings were exhibited commercially in prominent galleries and hotel galleries in San Francisco and Los Angeles. There is record that he participated in regional art organizations such as the Laguna Beach and Glendale Art Associations. There is no record of being a member of such organizations in San Francisco, perhaps because he was in San Francisco for a brief time, arriving as early as 1916 and leaving as early as 1918.

De Ribcowsky’s career took a dramatic turn. Like all artists of the time, his sales were greatly diminished to the Great Depression. But in 1931, he became a paraplegic due to injuries from a serious automobile accident, leaving him permanently confined to a wheelchair.

Rather than withdraw from public life, he adapted with remarkable determination. With the help of a nurse, and a chauffeur-driven car, he continued to travel and pursue his work, even making a cross-country train trip to New York in 1933, where he stayed at the Beacon Hotel. Back home in LA, he made is residence at the Ambassador Hotel where his paintings were displayed and sold to guests of the hotel and to LA's elite when they visited the Coconut Grove nightclub.

Despite his determined resilience, his health never fully recovered. He died at the young age of 55 in Santa Monica on August 15, 1936, five years after his accident.

Now at the gallery, Sunset and Rolling Waves, measuring 15 × 48 inches, has been drawing many admiring looks from gallery visitors. The glowing sky and dramatic atmosphere reveal de Ribcowsky’s admiration for the English painter J. M. W. Turner, whose blazing skies he would have studied during his years in Europe.

Supper Time, measuring 22 × 28 inches, turns to a quieter subject. Here de Ribcowsky paints a charming warm scene as humble couple sits down at their meager table, a domestic interior reminiscent of Dutch genre paintings of the 17th-century. Here, the husband and wife sit at their cottage table, illuminated by warm light from their window. As in many Dutch genre paintings, this moment is shared with the couple’s faithful family dog.

Fishing Dory Nocturne, just 9 × 6 inches, this gem beautifully captures the silhouette of a fishing dory riding dark waters under a cloud filtered moon. For me, this scene reminded me of the 1937 film Captains Courageous starring Spencer Tracy. Despite its modest size, this powerful painting creates a mood that continues to fascinate. With its flattened total composition, with its emphasis on mood over detail, it reminds us of the work of James McNeill Whistler. He reduces the figures and dorys to dark silhouettes while the sky and water are treated with atmospheric fields of amazing color.

(A fishing dory itself is a practical working boat: flat-bottomed with high flared sides and a narrow bow and stern, designed to handle both calm and rough water while being able to land and launch from sandy beaches.)