Monet in the 20th Century - Softcover

Tucker, Paul Hayes, Shackelford, George T.M., Stevens, MaryAnne

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0900946652 ISBN 13: 9780900946653

Publisher: Yale University Press, 1998

Synopsis

By the beginning of the twentieth century, Claude Monet was a figure of national importance in France, the "patriarch" of impressionism and the country's foremost landscape painter. This richly illustrated book examines for the first time the rich body of work that Monet completed from 1900 until his death in 1926, a period during which he was enormously productive, increasingly wealthy and ever more venerated. The paintings which crowned Monet's career included over 500 views of London, Venice and his gardens at Giverny. These paintings are almost signature canvases, especially the famous Water Lilies. However, they also presented him with enormous challenges: his London pictures took almost four years to complete, as did his Venice views, and his garden paintings, much more diverse than is generally known, became a persistent obsession. This book sets Monet's challenges and achievements within personal and historical contexts and carefully reconstructs his painting campaigns. It also assesses his public persona and considers his personal and professional strategies. What unfolds is a complicated story of an ageing artist determined to create a new art. This book is the catalogue for a new exhibition that celebrates the achievement of Claude Monet after 1900. It includes essays on the evolution of Monet's work after 1900, its relationship both to his earlier work and to contemporary critical and artistic developments, and the subsequent cultural and critical concerns which have shaped the more recent reception of his late work. It will open at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston on 23rd September, 1998 and run to 3rd January, 1999, before opening at the Royal Academy of Arts in London on 21st January 1999.

About this title

Review:

After the scores of beautiful Monet books that have been published over the last two decades, it is hard to imagine that a new one could be indispensable. But this volume, the catalog of an exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston (fall 1998, then travels to the Royal Academy of Arts in London) is more than just lovely. The main essay, by Paul Hayes Tucker, is a spellbinding history that ably places Monet and his late works in the context of the shattering political upheavals of his time. Tucker demonstrates the patriotic ideal of La France, which for Monet and his public was the ur-subject of his entire oeuvre up to the end of the 19th century, from the crashing waves at Étretat to the shimmering facades of Chartres. Then came the Dreyfus affair, with the Catholic Church and French conservatives united in an anti-Semitic attack against the innocent Jewish army captain accused of treason. Monet passionately and actively joined the writer Émile Zola, who was arrested for defending Dreyfus in his famous article, "J'Accuse." Tucker traces the rift in Monet's use of imagery from this time forward, as he turns his back on quintessentially French scenes to focus instead on the closely observed gardens in his own back yard. Tucker also subtly evokes Monet's despair during the long years of World War I, and his often heroic efforts to be of use, despite his age. This sumptuous volume, with its 12 fold-out plates of the Water Lilies, is very, very beautiful, but its story of an aging artist deeply engaged in his art and his times is something even better. --Peggy Moorman

About the Author:

Paul Tucker is professor of art at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. He is the author of Claude Monet: Life and Art (0300072864), Monet in the 90s (0300049137), and Monet at Argenteuil (0300032064), all published by Yale University Press. He has served as curator for two internationally acclaimed Monet exhibitions. MaryAnne Stevens is education secretary and chief curator at the Royal Academy and author of numerous exhibition catalogues. George Shackleford is the Mrs Russell W. Baker curator of European paintings at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

About this edition

• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0900946652
• ISBN 13: 9780900946653
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 304