Supreme art is
a traditional statement of certain heroic and religious truth,
passed on from age to age, modified by individual genius,
but never abandoned.
William Butler Yeats
Down the Garden Path
Water-lilies at Giverny
When the water-lilies in the garden carry us from
the surface of the water to the wandering clouds of infinite space, we
take leave of the earth - and even its heavens - to enjoy the highest
harmony of things, which lies beyond our little planet.
Georges Clemenceau, Claude Monet, 1929
The former French president
and statesman Georges Clemenceau described one of the water-lily pictures
painted by his friend
Claude Monet
as "a water-meadow covered with flowers and leaves, ignited by the torch
of the sun and glittering in the play of light between the sky and the
surface of the water". Clemenceau had successfully coordinated French
political and military efforts towards the end of the First World War
and made a major contribution to the Allied victory. He raved about
Monet's
water-lily pictures calling them a "revelation". Between 1915 and 1924
he made it possible for
Monet
to paint eight enormous water-lily murals on the walls of the Orangerie
in the Tuileries as a gift to the nation. Despite such encouragement,
however,
Claude Monet
was not surrounded by distinguished promoters and patrons from the
outset. On the contrary, his work entitled
Impression, soleil levant
inspired the critic Louis Leroy to coin the derogatory term
"Impressionists" for an entire group of painters whose work he did not
like. For decades
Monet
was almost destitute. Not until art dealer Theo van Gogh, Vincent's
brother, managed to sell one of his paintings for 10,350 Francs — then
an almost unheard of price for a work of contemporary art — was
Claude Monet
able to live fairly comfortably. Already middle-aged, he began to reap the
fruits of his success.
Monet
was even able to make a life-long dream come true. For seven years he
had rented a country house in Giverny; now he was able to buy it and lay
out a garden of flowers and shrubs. In 1895 and 1896 he successfully
negotiated the purchase of several neighbouring plots of land —
including a pond — which he planted with a profusion of weeping willows,
irises, rhododendrons and water-lilies. An avid landscape gardener, he
was inspired by Japanese woodcuts, which were by now sought after on the
European art market, especially in France and England.
Monet
was so fond of his estate that his chief preoccupa
tion
for the remaining thirty-six years of his life was painting views of his
gardens. As a young man he had always painted out of doors to capture
the light and atmosphere and the interplay of colour and reflection. The
six gardeners Monet employed in old age took care of his paradise,
leaving him free to paint it and touch up the paintings in his studio.
Water-lilies were his obsession: between 1903 and 1908 he painted
forty-eight pictures of them, which he exhibited in Paris in 1909. He
sought eternity in painting, or so his fleeting glimpse of it would seem
to intimate.
