«Monet and the Nympheas», one of the best exhibitions of this year, is now on show at the Orangerie Museum in Paris until August 2nd 1999. Some 60 panels, out of the 250 produced by the Impressionist painter from 1897 until his death, are being shown in the museum, which excepts a record affluence.
The «Water-Lilies» panels were offered to the museum in 1931 but were hidden behind tapestries five years later. Damaged by water following a leak in the roof and by bombshells in 1944, these were the object of restoration work in 1952 which ended in 1978.
The Orangerie museum was in 1952 the «Sistine Chapel» of Impressionism as André Masson once wrote. Many American or foreign artists such as Joan Mitchell, Sam Francis or Ellsworth kelly came to visit it and contribute to Monet's revival.
From then on the «Nympheas» became a kind of prototype for contemporary art.
Monet launched the idea of installation and that of series creating a particular environment in which the visitor is able to feel surrounded by what he painted feeling immersed in his work. In fact, Monet managed to communicate what he sensed and saw.
The painter started to work on this theme in 1897 and a journalist named Guillemot who visited his studio that year wrote : «he has started to make studies of large panels placed in a kind of circular room occupied by some horizon of water dotted with plants, green and mauve, the calm and silence of the still waters reflecting some spread out flora».
Monet was in fact searching some infinity, a wave without horizon or limits. To achieve such goal he used a process that he had already experimented in 1889 with haystacks, poplars and cathedrals produced as series during different hours of the day.
He wanted to paint as many «Nympheas» as he could under all possible angles. The subject became a pretext, water was transformed in oil and willows really wept while perspective became a true illusion.
The «Water-lilies» series were truly part of the history of art as Monet managed to express himself freely balancing between Impressionism and abstraction. These paintings in fact make him the pioneer of lyrical abstraction though Monet always pretended he had stuck to reality.
The «Water-lilies» are a precious testimony of Monet's last years as he devoted his time to painting his garden and its pond during the remaining 20 years of his life.
Thousands of visitors are expected to pack the Orangerie museum as Monet is the painter they prefer. The Royal Academy of London attracted some 600,000 visitors during an exhibition which ended last month while the house of the painter in Giverny has been constantly crowded with admirers.
Regarding auction sales, Monet is among the best rated masters. A «Pond with Nympheas» measuring 80 x 100 cm notably went at Sotheby's for over $ 33 million on June 1998, a record for the painter.
Many paintings have been loaned from abroad for this exhibition, including four from Britain and 18 from the U.S. Meanwhile another painting representing the same theme, stolen from Paul Rosenberg by the Nazis during the Second World War and recovered by French authorities in 1945, has just been returned to the family of the dealer.
The painting had been deposited in the Caen museum after Paul Rosenberg had failed to recognise it among those which had been found after the war. As a gesture, the American heirs of Paul Rosenberg, loaned this work for the Orangerie exhibition. Adrian Darmon
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