The Detroit Institute of Art: Church & Monet

From the exhibit: Monet Framing Life

This week we previewed the new exhibits at the Detroit Institute of Arts. Church: A Painter's Pilgrimage presented his Old World paintings that explored human history in the Middle East, Athens and Rome. Monet: Framing Life highlights Monet's life in Argenteuil between 1871 and 1878, the background of the DIA's painting Rounded Flower Bed, often called Gladioli. Since Monet and Church are two of my favorite painters, I was excited to see the exhibits!

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from the exhibit Church: A Painter's Pilgrimage

Monet portrait by Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Monet painting of his hometown Argenteuil. Note the factory smokestacks on the horizon.

The Monet exhibit included paintings by Monet of his home in Argenteuil.

Argenteuil in winter scene

Side displays explained how paint was made and the kind of easel Monet used for his open air painting. Originally minerals and other color sources were hand ground and mixed with linseed oil to make oil paint.

The paint was stored in, literally, pigs bladders!

When Monet painted his house and garden he chose a view that did not show how built up the suburb was.

When Renoir painted Monet painting the above painting, he showed the other houses in the background.

The Detroit Museum of Art has one Monet in its permanent collection, Rounded Flower Bed. It shows Camille Monet in their garden.

Frederic Church and family toured the Middle East and Mediterranean in the late 1870s. While his paintings in North and Central America focused on the sublime and nature, including Niagara Falls and the Mexican volcano Coxtopaxi (which painting is in the DIA's permanent collection), these paintings were an exploration of history and ancient cities. The architecture and art he viewed influenced him to incorporate elements into his masterpiece Oloana, his home overlooking the Hudson Valley.

One of the larger paintings in the Church exhibit shows Jerusalem.

Forground details of olive trees and the rocky ground

This painting shows Church in conversation in the right foreground and the poet Whittier and his daughter under the arch.

Nature vs the manmade. Human work is fleeting, but nature is eternal.

These photographs cannot do justice to Church's masterful skills.

The Monet exhibit ends March 4, 2018. The Church exhibit ends January 15, 2018. The gift store items that accompany these exhibits include wonderful one of a kind items. I drooled over Monet inspired hand painted shades on glass or cement lamps!

Read about Mad Enchantment by Ross King on Monet's later career painting the Water Lilies during WWI at https://theliteratequilter.blogspot.com/2016/09/mad-enchantment-claude-monet-and.html

Mad Enchantment: Claude Monet and the Painting of the Water Lilies by Ross King

As a girl I scoured the public library for art books. My love of the Impressionists, especially Monet, came early. I requested Ross King's new book on Claude Monet as soon as I saw it on NetGalley. 

Although I was very familiar with Monet's paintings, especially those in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, I knew very little about his life.

King focuses on Monet's later years as he struggled to realize his Grande Decoration during WWI while dealing with failing eyesight. The trials of the artistic life, how genius copes with human limitations, and the horrendous impact of WWI on France is vividly portrayed.

Nympheas, Japanese Bridge,
1918-1926, Claude Monet, Philadelphia Museum of Art

Although it took me a few chapters to get into the book I became swept up in Monet's story. I recall complaining, "I can't stop now, Monet's undergoing eye surgery!" 

Claude Monet Water Garden in Giverny, photo Ariane Cauderlier

The book begins in April, 1914 with Monet's dear friend Prime Minister Clemenceau coming to Giverny, the rustic hamlet where Monet built an 'earthly paradise'--the gardens now famously preserved in his paintings.  

L'Agapanthe, Monet 1920-22

The concept of Monet's Grande Decoration was born after the death of his son Jean in 1914. His water lily pond would be recreated through a series of massive paintings to be displayed in an oval room. He spent years obsessed with capturing ephemeral beauty. Monet promised Clemenceau he would give the water lily paintings to France. 

"Many people think I paint easily, but it is not an easy things to be an artist. I often suffer tortures when I paint. it is a great joy and a great suffering." Claude Monet

Cataracts and blindness plagued Monet and compromised his belief in himself. He knew what he wanted to achieve but felt his limitations. 

Monet was a passionate man who would rave at life's limitations. He was his own worse critic, destroying canvases that he considered failures. He stalled handing over the paintings. As long as he had his great work he had a reason to live. The delay strained his friendship with Clemenceau. 

At his death in 1926 the paintings were put on display in the Orangerie at Tuileries. Go on a virtual visit to here.

Monet the man and the artist was brought to life in King's book and I have a better appreciation of the impact of WWI on France.  

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Mad Enchantment
Ross King
Bloomsbury
Publication Date: Sept 6, 2016
$30 hard cover
ISBN:9781632860125