frequently became almost an end in themselves and, as a result, his harmonious perception of Nature began to disappear. It is indicative that during this period he was already working in isolation.
Although this did not mean breaking off personal contacts with the friends of his youth, creative contact with them was lost. There were no more joint exhibitions, no exchanges of opinion, no arguments. In the 1890s, Pissarro moved away from Divisionism, and this marked a broad return to his old sphere of work, although his new pictures were no mere repetition of what he had produced before. Sisley, who had always remained rather in the shade, and who, in contrast to the other Impressionists, had not experienced any great creative turmoil, fell seriously ill and died in 1899.
Wheatstacks, 1891. Oil on canvas, 64.8 × 99.7 cm.
J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles.
Haystacks (Midday), 1890. Oil on canvas, 65.6 × 100.6 cm.
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra.
Break-up of the Ice on the Seine, near Bennecourt, c. 1892–1893.
Oil on canvas, 65 × 100 cm. Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool.
In the mid-1880s, Renoir informed his correspondents that he was once again painting in his former soft and gentle manner and although, as with Pissarro, this was by no means a complete regression, Renoir’s art nonetheless regained its old verve, emotional power, and ingenuousness.
It was, however, the career of Claude Monet that demonstrated with truly classic clarity not only how Impressionism arose and flourished, but also how, when it lost the lyricism at its heart, it slowly died.
One of the central problems tackled by Monet at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century was that of serial work. The principle of work in series had been used by artists before Monet, especially in the field of graphic art, with cycles of several sheets devoted to a single event, hero, town, and so on.
Artists were particularly prolific with series depicting the seasons of the year, some of them relying on the language of conventional allegory, others depicting rural labour at different times of the year. Before Monet, however, no one in European art had created series devoted to a single motif such as haystacks, a row of poplars, or the façade of a cathedral.
Monet’s forerunners in this respect were Japanese artists, in particular Katsushika Hokusai, the creator of numerous series, including the celebrated Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji. Like all painters of his time, Monet was enthusiastic about the Japanese woodcuts which literally enchanted French art lovers during the latter half of the 19th century.
His enthusiasm was at first rather superficial, as evinced, for example, in La Japonaise (vol. 1, p. 157), which depicts Camille in a kimono against the background of a wall decorated with Japanese fans. This element of fancy dress gave way to a more profound grasp of the aesthetic of Japanese art, although here too Monet did not merely follow the lead of other artists, and was swayed more by inner impulse than outside influence.
Throughout Monet’s series the basic subject remains unchanged but the lighting varies. Thus as the eye becomes accustomed to looking at one and the same object, it gradually loses interest in the thing itself and, like the artist, the viewer is no longer attracted by the subject as such, but rather by the changing light playing on its surfaces.
Poplars on the Epte, 1891. Oil on canvas,
81.8 × 81.3 cm. Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh.
His Life – His Series
It is light that becomes the ‘hero’ of each painting, dictating its own laws, colouring objects in various ways, imparting either solidity or transparency, and altering contours by either rendering the boundaries of forms uncertain, or making them perceptible only as sharp silhouettes.
At Giverny, series painting became one of Monet’s chief working procedures. Thirty years later he recounted how he had arrived at it:
I was painting some haystacks which had caught my eye and which made a terrific group, just a short distance from here. One day I noticed that my light had changed. I said to my stepdaughter, “Go to the house and get me another canvas, if you don’t mind.” She brought it to me, but shortly after, it was different again. Another! And one more! And I wouldn’t work on any of them unless I had my effect, and that was it.
The haystacks became a nearly endless series in his work.
He painted them at the very beginning of summer, on the green grass, and in winter, with a thin layer of snow covering them. To Monet’s sensitive eye there was an infinite diversity of colours in this mass of dry, yellowed grass.
In various combinations, his red, brown, green, and even blue brushstrokes depicted the way the colours change according to the distribution of light. Monet was remarkably consistent in his approach to his research.
He worked like a scholar stubbornly pursuing the objective he had set for himself. The poplar trees along the Epte river also became the object of his painting researches.
At first he was attracted to the rhythmic beauty of these soaring trees. Then came the phase of meticulously studying the modifications in their colour.
At the beginning of the 1890s Monet travelled to Rouen. In 1892 he went there to purchase back some of his own paintings that his half-sister Marie had inherited. Monet took a room facing the famous Gothic cathedral.
As he had to stay in Rouen for some time, he began to paint the cathedral from his window.
He had meant to return to Giverny after several days, but his work absorbed him completely. He painted the cathedral in all weather and at all times of day or night.
Houses of Parliament, Sunlight Effect (Le Parlement, effet de soleil), 1903.
Oil on canvas, 81.3 × 92.1 cm. Brooklyn Museum, New York.
Houses of Parliament, Stormy Sky, 1904.
Oil on canvas, 81 × 92 cm. Palais des Beaux-arts, Lille.
When lit by the sun at midday the enormous mass of the cathedral dissolved in the hazy heat, its contours became blurred, and the building became lighter and nearly transparent.
At night the blue shadows were deeper and denser, and the gothic-filigree stonework of the façade appeared in all its splendour. In reality the motif in Monet’s painting was not Rouen Cathedral at all, it was the light and air of Normandy.
The result was a veritable symphony of colours. Art had never, up to that point, seen anything like it.
In the spring of 1895 Monet opened his exhibition, where he showed twenty variations of his Rouen Cathedral. Sadly, the critics’ exhortations to the buyers to purchase the series as a whole went unheard, and Monet’s ‘Cathedrals’ were scattered throughout the world.
The meadows of Giverny always remained his favourite motif. In the luxuriantly flowering grass with its poppies exploding in tiny flames, Monet’s practiced eye, trained
