Tea at Trianon: Monet: Places

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Monday, May 4, 2020

Monet: Places

Claude Monet, Waterloo Bridge, Sunlight Effect (1903). Courtesy of the Denver Art Museum.

Claude Monet, The Palazzo Contarini (1908). Courtesy of Museum Barberini.

Claude Monet, The Tuileries (1876).,Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris, Photo: Bridgeman Images, Berlin.

From ArtNet:

What the museum says: “The exhibition ‘Monet: Places’ reveals the strategies pursued by the artist in deciding where to live and what cities to visit. This broad panorama of his oeuvre is illustrated by over 100 exhibits, from his first recorded composition to the famous water lilies painted in his garden in Giverny in the final years of his career. As visitors progress through the rooms they will be able to trace Monet’s entire artistic development, culminating in his late serial works, and will gain a sense of the various places which inspired his Impressionist plein air painting.”

Why it’s worth a look: This sprawling exhibition is derived mostly from the personal collection of the software billionaire Hasso Plattner, who founded the Museum Barberini Potsdam, along with significant holdings from the Denver Art Museum, and spans the breadth of Claude Monet’s endless thirst to find new sources of inspiration in the varied landscape he travelled.

As the museum points out, Monet was exceptional in his transience as compared with many of his peers, “whose work was inextricably linked to a particular area.” Portable tubes of paint and a railway system were vital to Monet’s success, especially as he traversed many popular tourist destinations, capturing the magical light and aura of places frequented by the wealthy.

Monet was especially focused on the exact topographies of the places he visited. And of course, his fascination with light meant that each work was a precise documentation of a particular time of day in a particular place. The exhibition serves as a kind of lifelong diary of the artist’s career, taking the viewer along his travel routes and into his mind. (Read more.)