Nothing About The Bakken -- Monet's Bathers -- October 26, 2016

Wow, this makes my day.

A few weeks ago, a spectacular, special exhibit of Monet's early years opened at the Kimbell Museum in Ft Worth, TX. We visited the exhibit the first Tuesday, the second day the exhibit was opened to the public. I was overwhelmed. I was in awe. At that visit last week I mostly just took in the paintings but did not read much about them. I was not interested in the descriptions, or the history, or the critiques. I just wanted to see the paintings, some of which I had seen in Europe, and had not seen for years, and will likely never see most of them again.

Yesterday we visited the exhibit again (it's half-price for seniors on Tuesdays) -- and we will visit at least twice more, once with the granddaughters and once more just before the exhibit moves to San Francisco, its only other venue.

But yesterday, I  went to learn. We were the first ones in the gallery; it would fill up within 45 minutes, so like an impressionist painting, I had to be fast.

I learned a lot.

One vignette: in his early years Monet and his wife had been disowned by his family; he was dirt-poor; and they could go a week without bread, heat, or light. Without Renoir's generosity, Monet may have literally starved to death. His stimulant was oil painting.

Be that as it may, Renoir and Monet, side-by-side, painted swimmers at a swimming hole on the Seine River, in English, "Swimmers at La Grenouillère." From wiki:

La Grenouillère was a popular middle-class resort consisting of a spa, a boating establishment and a floating café. Optimistically promoted as "Trouville-sur-Seine", it was located on the Seine near Bougival, easily accessible by train from Paris and had just been favoured with a visit by Emperor Napoleon III with his wife and son. Monet and Renoir both recognized in La Grenouillère an ideal subject for the images of leisure they hoped to sell.

Monet and his family were living in Bougival at the time.

I write all that to write this. Today, while reading Edmund de Waal's The Hare With Amber Eyes, on page 78:

He (Charles Ephrussi), living in Paris at the time (back in the 1870s) bought a spectacular painting by Monet of bathers, Les bains de la Grenouillère.

Wow! Completely unexpected!

As noted above, Renoir and Monet painted La Grenouillère side-by-side. Renoir painted three paintings (sketches, of course), and Monet, two. Monet's two paintings were "sketches" -- very accomplished sketches, of course -- which he would use to paint a larger, finished canvas.

Monet's larger, finished canvas of the bathers has never been found; it is presumed destroyed. From wiki:

A bigger size painting, now lost but formerly in the Arnhold collection in Berlin, may well have been the "tableau" that he dreamed of.

De Waal's The Hare With Amber Eyes is the story of his family's wealth in art, particularly Japanese ceramics, the netsuke, and how objets d'art are moved along through history.

Everything his family owned was stolen or destroyed by the Nazis in the 1940s -- except for the 264 netsuke.

Renoir's and Monet's paintings of the bathers are important in the art world for this reason: this appears to be the turning point in Monet's career as well as a turning point in the history of art.

I wondered where Monet's finished painting of La Grenouillère is; now I know.

Note: with regard to The Hare With Amber Eyes. The author is Edmund de Waal, the #1 ceramicist in England at the time the book was written. It's hard to tell from the family tree, but if I have it right, Edmund is the grandson of Hendrik de Waal, who married into the Ephrussi family when he married Elisabeth, the daughter of Victor [which would be the author's great-grandfather], who in turn was the son of Ignace von Ephrussi [the author's great-great-grandfather), the second-born son to the patriarch, Charles Joachim Ephrussi, b.1793 - 1864. Charles, who figures prominently as the collector of the 264 netsuke in the book was born 1849 (Odessa) and died 1905 (Vienna). Charles was the son of the first-born son of the patriarch Charles, thus making the author a distant nephew of Charles.

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A Note For The Granddaughters

For Monet, he used two words for sketches: pochade and esquisses.

These are not sketches in "my" sense of the word. These are often the 2' by 3' paintings by famous painters seen in the best museums of fine art. The pochade "comes first" and then later, the artist paints the esquisse, sort of like the final dress rehearsal before the opening of a London stage play, for which folks pay to see.

These "sketches" (paintings by another name) are then the "models" for the final large, often wall-sized painting that may or may never be seen except by a very fortunate few. When these paintings get that large, it is hard for the artist (or any owner) to hide them or protect them from being stolen.

Next time you visit a fine arts museum, watch the small print: if the curator is very precise, you may see the word "sketch" more often than "painting."