**Authentically Human! Not Written by AI**
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| Monet's Water Lily Paintings at Musée de l'Orangerie |
Where do I even start? It was Claude Monet who inspired many people to become artists—including me. Sure, when I was very young I'd dabbled in paint and salivated over the prints in One Hundred and One Masterpieces, but none of that set my path. Instead, the catalyst was an exhibit of Monet's water lily series, which my mother took me to see as a teenager. I remember entering a vast, round hall, vibrant with color—and all I saw was color. I knew at that moment that I wanted to paint, and to paint just like that.
Monet (1846-1926) didn't paint "just like that" at the start. He first took a more academic route, starting at age 11 at Le Havre Secondary School of the Arts and continuing at 18 with studies at Académie Suisse, focusing on the figure. Around that same time, he befriended the older artist Eugène Boudin (1824-1898), who introduced him to plein air painting. Following this, he fell in with a group of ne'er-do-wells that included Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919), Edgar Degas (1834-1917) and Camille Pissarro (1830-1903). Plein air painting and his comrades-in-art changed the way he painted. After that, he was rarely accepted by the academic Salon for its exhibitions: "His work was considered radical, 'discouraged at all official levels.'"
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| Left: Monet at age 21 in a portrait by his teacher, Carolus Duran Right: Monet at 53 |
In 1874, Monet exhibited the now-famous "Impression, Soleil Levant" at the first exhibit of the Société Anonyme des Artistes Peintres, Sculpteurs et Graveurs, a group he co-founded with his fellow revolutionaries. Of course, the practice that is today called Impressionism had been born a few years before, but it was this exhibit that gave the movement its name. A dyspeptic critic titled the exhibit "Exposition des Impressionnistes." He wrote of Monet's entry: "A preliminary drawing for a wallpaper pattern is more finished than this seascape."
The rest is history, of course. Monet painted his water lily series late in life, just before his vision began to deteriorate from cataracts. (Color rather than form became his focus.) Unhappy with his eyesight, he had surgery presented to him as an option. But his close friend, Mary Cassatt, had recently had the surgery, and it had not gone well. So, he fought against it: "I prefer to make the most of my poor sight, and even give up painting if necessary, but at least be able to see a little of these things that I love."
As his vision worsened, he was finally persuaded in 1923 to have the surgery performed on his right eye. This two part-procedure, which involved removal of part of the iris and the entire lens, required him to lie flat on his back with sandbags butted up against him to keep him from moving. After a third procedure, he wrote: "It is to my great chagrin that I regret having had this fatal operation. Pardon me for speaking so frankly and let me tell you that it is criminal to have put me in this situation."
So frustrated with the experience, he never had the left eye done. But interestingly, a discussion of Monet's cataract problems by Anna Gruener in the British Journal of General Practice notes:
Monet’s postoperative works are devoid of garish colours or coarse application and resemble his paintings from before 1914. The delicate colour schemes emphasising gentle blues and greens are consistent with the earlier pond and garden views. It is therefore unlikely that he had intentionally adopted the broader and more abstract style of his late paintings, reinforcing the argument that Monet’s late works were the result of cataracts and not conscious experimentation with a more expressionistic style. Nonetheless, it is his late works, created under the influence of his cataracts, that link impressionism with modern abstract art.
(For the full, fascinating tale of Monet and cataracts, visit this link.)
Many of us develop cataracts as we age. I've been told I have the beginnings. Will I, like Monet, fight against having surgery? Things have come a long way since Monet. But the friends who've had it tell me blues will look more vivid. Do I really want that?
