Monet in England

8 snips

Jul 25, 2024

Guest

Karen Serres, Senior Curator at the Courtauld Gallery, Frances Fowle, Professor of Nineteenth-Century Art, and Jackie Wullschläger, Chief Art Critic for the Financial Times, delve into Monet’s transformative experiences in London. They discuss how war drove him to the city and the subsequent commercial success that influenced his iconic Thames paintings. The guests highlight his fascination with fog and light, the evolution of his style, and his quest for artistic identity, illustrating how London reshaped his Impressionist vision.

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ANECDOTE

Monet's Havre

Monet moved to Le Havre as a child, sparking a lifelong love for water and movement.
He painted thousands of water pictures, finding solace in it after his mother's death at 16.

ANECDOTE

Monet's Modernism

While other artists copied old masters, Monet painted modern Paris from a Louvre balcony.
He embraced everyday life as his subject, using loose brushstrokes to capture fleeting moments.

ANECDOTE

Monet's Refuge

Monet, a Republican, fled to London during the Franco-Prussian War to avoid fighting.
He was miserable but safe, creating six or seven London paintings during this time.

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Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work of the great French Impressionist Claude Monet (1840-1926) in London, initially in 1870 and then from 1899. He spent his first visit in poverty, escaping from war in France, while by the second he had become so commercially successful that he stayed at the Savoy Hotel. There, from his balcony, he began a series of almost a hundred paintings that captured the essence of this dynamic city at that time, with fog and smoke almost obscuring the bridges, boats and Houses of Parliament. The pollution was terrible for health but the diffraction through the sooty droplets offered an ever-changing light that captivated Monet, and he was to paint the Thames more than he did his water lilies or haystacks or Rouen Cathedral. On his return to France, Monet appeared to have a new confidence to explore an art that was more abstract than impressionist.

With

Karen Serres Senior Curator of Paintings at the Courtauld Gallery, London Curator of the exhibition 'Monet and London. Views of the Thames'

Frances Fowle Professor of Nineteenth-Century Art at the University of Edinburgh and Senior Curator of French Art at the National Galleries of Scotland

And

Jackie Wullschläger Chief Art Critic for the Financial Times and author of ‘Monet, The Restless Vision’

In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio Production

Producer: Simon Tillotson Studio production: John Goudie

Reading list:

Caroline Corbeau Parsons, Impressionists in London: French Artists in Exile 1870-1904 (Tate Publishing, 2017)

Frances Fowle, Monet and French Landscape: Vétheuil and Normandy (National Galleries of Scotland, 2007), especially the chapter ‘Making Money out of Monet: Marketing Monet in Britain 1870-1905’

Robert Gordon and Andrew Forge, Monet (Harry N. Abrams, 1983)

Paul Hayes Tucker, Monet in the ’90s: The Series Paintings (Yale University Press, 1990)

Paul Hayes Tucker, Monet in the 20th Century (Yale University Press, 1998)

Katharine A. Lochnan, Turner, Whistler, Monet (Tate Publishing, 2005)

Nicholas Reed, Monet and the Thames: Paintings and Modern Views of Monet’s London (Lilburne Press, 1998)

Grace Seiberling, Monet in London (High Museum of Art, 1988)

Karen Serres, Frances Fowle and Jennifer A. Thompson, Monet and London: Views of the Thames (Paul Holberton Publishing, 2024 – catalogue to accompany Courtauld Gallery exhibition)

Charles Stuckey, Monet: A Retrospective (Random House, 1985)

Daniel Wildenstein, Monet: The Triumph of Impressionism (first published 1996; Taschen, 2022)

Jackie Wullschläger, Monet: The Restless Vision (Allen Lane, 2023)