February 26, 2020
Artizon Museum, Ishibashi Foundation

Monet: Questioning Nature
A special exhibition from the Museé dʼOrsay and Museé de lʼOrangerie
The Impressionist artist Claude Monet (1840-1926) is known to have been so fascinated by thebeauty of outdoor light in natural scenes that he devoted his life to seeking out that light andpursuing techniques for rendering it, in the course of which he revolutionized landscapepainting. Monet originated a landscape art that overturned from the very root the vision ofworks depicting landscapes up to that time. His paintings created a means for conveying theworldview of a new era and its poetic sensibility.
This exhibition will carefully trace the important periods and places of Monet's achievementsin painting. These are, namely, the Le Havre period, the Argenteuil period, the Vétheuil period,
the journeying period in the 1880s, and the Giverny period. The exhibition will meticulously
explore what Monet looked at in each of these periods and places, how he rendered it, andwhat main themes informed his images. It will follow the process that led at the end of hisoeuvre to the series of works depicting water lilies, and in doing so it will show that eachindividual work represents a development and expansion within their continuity. Also ondisplay will be works by artists of the same period who were major influences on Monet's
oeuvre, works in the new expressive medium of photography, works of Ukiyo-e , with theirradical differences from the contexts of the West, and finally Art Nouveau craft works by Émile
Gallé and others who gave visual form to their visions of waterside scenes.
Under the supervision of Sylvie Patry, Senior Curator and Deputy Director for Curatorial Affairs
and Collections at the Musée d'Orsay, the exhibition is being produced jointly with the Artizon
Museum. It will bring together some 130 items, including 96 pieces from the renowned
Monet collection and related works held by the Musée d'Orsay, as well as additional works
from the Artizon Museum, other art museums, and private collections in Japan, in a focusedpresentation that illuminates the actuality of Monet as a landscape artist.

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Exhibition Highlights
1.
Approach Monet's oeuvre in chronological order to illuminate how this painter wrought arevolution in landscape art
Claude Monet roamed to a variety of different places in the course of his life, and heproduced art by a variety of different methods. We will trace a chronological route throughMonet's artistic oeuvre, presenting in order of time the themes and techniques that came
together during his last years in his sequence of works on water lilies, and illuminating theinnovativeness of Monet's landscape paintings.
2.
This unprecedented, entirely new Monet exhibition weaves a network of connections withother, contemporary painters as well as with a variety of visually expressive genres, including
photography, Ukiyo-e, the fine and applied arts of the Art Nouveau movement, and so on.
In producing his landscape paintings, Monet engaged with peaceful natural scenes andsometimes with scenes of nature raging with snow, wind, or rain. As he saw it, he transferred
it as it was onto his canvas. Or at least this is how his work tends to be explained. However,Monet's landscape art was nurtured through the artist's untiring pursuit of a wide range ofvisual and artistic cultivation. Although he made his confrontations with nature a starting
point, Monet was receptive to influences from past artists as well as his contemporaries, but
he also looked beyond them to photography and Ukiyo-e. Out of the images unfolding fromthese and other such expressive media that were undergoing major transformations at thattime, Monet gained the clarity of knowing where he himself stood as an artist.
3.
Carefully selected works from the great Monet collection at the Musée d'Orsay are coming toJapan
There are 73 paintings by Monet in the Musée d'Orsay collection. This is one of the mostimportant and most comprehensive collections in the world. Formed out of donations frommany people, prominent among them Monet's comrade in art Gustave Caillebotte, thiscollection offers a means to trace through the oeuvre of Monet as though all ofImpressionism were condensed in this single person. For this exhibition, 42 items selectedwith care from among those works will come to Japan, including 22 items to be exhibited forthe first time in this country.

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At a place closest to the motif
Monet in Normandy and Fontainebleau in the 1860sThe first section identifies connections with artists of a slightly earlier generation such as
Camille Corot and Eugène Boudin and traces the course by which the young Monet's
naturalistic approach led to his landscape painting from the late 1850s into the mid-1860s.
It was in 1856 that Monet met Boudin, who became his teacher. When Monet looked back at
his past in later years, he spoke about how decisive this encounter had been for him.
"It was thanks to Boudin that I was able to become a painter."
Features that were conspicuous in Monet's later works can also be seen in this painting.
These are, in other words, his painting outdoors, his painting from nature, the effects ofwater and atmosphere as compositional elements of his landscape, and the luminosity andrichness of his coloring.
Section 2
A room for photography
Motifs and effects
In the 19th century, painters were starting to leave their ateliers to go outdoors and paintlandscapes. This generally coincided with the time in the 1850s when photographers,
who had only recently begun engaging in photography, started to work in nature as thoughfollowing the painters' trend. The forest of Fontainebleau became an atelier for outdoor
creation by painters and photographers alike. In the mid-1860s, Monet also did productive
work here.
The vivid depiction of nature by the two expressive techniques of painting and photography
was to contribute to the subsequent reformation of landscape art.
Section 3
Around "The Magpie"
The colors of snow
Monet created paintings inspired by snow many times during his life as an artist. In "TheMagpie," painted in 1869, has foliage tinged with peach and lavender, a bluish cast to thegrey of the fence, and the black of the magpie. These and other colors show the effects ofMonet's exploration throughout the painting of the color white. Scenes of fallen snow will
flatten out the bumps and hollows in the field of view, but in this painting Monet has
juxtaposed finely colored surfaces, much as found in Ukiyo-e snow scenes, to create amasterful effect of depth.
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Scenes from modern life
Paris and Argenteuil
The modern architecture of the Saint-Lazare Station in central Paris appears to have greatly
stimulated Monet's curiosity, as 11 or 12 of his works depict it. Monet showed eight of
those works in the Impressionist Exhibition of 1877, dramatically making the point thatthe landscape paintings of Impressionism had a modern mission to fulfill. Then, from late1871 to the middle of the following year, Monet took up residence in Argenteuil, a town
in the Paris suburbs easily reached by trains departing from this station. In addition toworks depicting the resort area along the Seine River, Monet also turned his eye upon
the advances of industrialization there.
Section 5The changing seasonsVétheuil
From 1878 to 1881, Monet lived in Vétheuil on the banks of the Seine River to thenorthwest of Paris. Here Monet set up his easel on an embankment of the Seine River atthe edge of his garden and observed the appearances of nature changing with the changeof seasons. Unlike Argenteuil, Vétheuil had avoided industrialization, but the thoroughordinariness of this village highlighted the importance of the phenomena of weather as
an element there. The way that Monet repeatedly adopted the same point of view in hisworks here anticipates his initial attempts at creating landscape paintings in series during
the 1880s and prefigures the water lilies of his later years.
This portrait of a woman standing on an embankment and holding a white parasol isrendered with a feeling like that of a landscape painting.
Section 6
Creative travels of the 1880s
During the 1880s, Monet frequently left his family behind and went on journeys todifferent places in France to paint landscapes. He spent time traveling in France and inother countries, as well. In heading off to all these different locations, Monet put his own
art to the test in a variety of topographies and seasons, and under different lights.
From September to November of 1886, Monet stayed on the island of Belle-Ile on thecoast of Brittany. His interest there was turned to the rocky shoreline at the mercy of the4/7

waves and the storm-tossed sea. Out of his entire oeuvre, Monet's compositions overlooking
the sea from on high probably have the most readily discernible resemblance to the Ukiyo-e ofJapan.
Section 7
Japonism
It is well known that Monet learned approaches to nature and landscape from Japanese art, andparticularly from Ukiyo-e. An art that began to be familiar to Monet from around 1864-1865,
when he was in his mid-20s,Ukiyo-e cultivated a way of looking at nature that was not found inWestern art. Monet had a collection of Ukiyo-e in his house in Giverny, and it is said that he evenbrought that collection with him to the very place where he created the "Water Lilies." Apartfrom the clear colors, the bold compositions, the placement of the horizon, whether on land orwater, the care given to the changes and the continuity of the seasons, can all be consideredemblematic of the richly productive relationship Monet's landscape paintings had with Japan's

Ukiyo-e .
Section 8Series, repetitions, and inner landscapes
By the 1890s, Monet had almost completely stopped painting single works on just one motif.
Instead he had begun creating sequences of paintings on a single theme, such as a row ofpoplars or a cathedral. In other words, he came to create series of paintings. In 1892 and 1893,
Monet spent several weeks in Rouen and painted works on the subject of Rouen Cathedral. This
work eventually coalesced in a series of 30 paintings. What caught Monet's interest was thefacade of this structure, and he painted the way its colors changed with the light under cloudy
skies and sunny skies, in the evening and in the morning.
Section 9
Fin de siècle and the landscape photographs of Pictorialism
In the mid-1890s, photographers were also seeking to free themselves from subjugation to theobject being photographed, and they began approaching landscape as something moreinternalized. This section will introduce works by the photographers of Pictorialism, whosought to heighten the artistic nature of the photograph. "Gathering Water-Lilies" by PeterHenry Emerson is a work from generally the same period when Monet painted works on thesame topic.

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Section 10
Monet and the Giverny garden
Etienne Clémentel's autochromes
This section will introduce the color photographs, called autochromes, created by Étienne
Clémentel. At the time, Clémentel was Minister of Commerce, Industry, Posts and Telegraphs
when the politician Georges Clemenceau introduced him to Monet in 1916. Clémentel had also
been a painter himself in his younger days, and he was an amateur photographer. He visited
Monet around 1920 and took various photographs of the artist.
Section 11
Water Lilies
In 1883, Monet settled down in Giverny, which was to be his final residence. In 1893,
he purchased adjoining property to the south of his residence in order to build a water garden.
It was not until 1895, some 10 years after moving there, that Monet began to make paintings ofthe pond. This was the start of a new creative activity, different from what went before in that
Monet was painting pictures of something that he had created of his own will.
The garden in Giverny was something that brought order to nature, whether in the colors of
the flowers planted there, the carefully wrought plan of the garden, or the construction of thepond. After Monet experienced various tragic misfortunes, losing his wife Alice in 1911 andhis son Jean in February 1914, the artist began creating again in 1914. Aspiring to achieve
something even greater, he set to work on his masterpiece, the "Water Lilies." The completedgroup of works was donated to the nation in 1918 to celebrate the Armistice ending the FirstWorld War. In 1927, after Monet's death, the paintings were placed in the collection of theMusée de l'Orangerie. The present exhibition displays Monet's paintings of water lilies in avariety of renderings together with Art Nouveau craft works created at the same time to depict
the same themes by Émile Gallé and the Daum brothers.
Video artwork"Water Lilies"
A sensuous present-day reconfiguration by Ange Leccia
A video artwork created by present-day video artist Ange Leccia as a homage to Claude Monet
will be shown. Curation by Cécile Debray, Director of the Musée de l’ Orangerie.

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Breakdown of Exhibited Works
42 works by Monet from the collection of the Musée d'Orsay17 works by Monet from the Artizon Museum and collections in Japan
17 works by painters who were influences on Monet
11 Art Nouveau craft works / 15 Ukiyo-e works / 34 photographic works
2 video works (above items slated for display)

Images of works marked with a star ★ after the caption are promotional images.

Exhibition overview
Exhibition title:

Monet: Questioning Nature
A special exhibition from the Museé d’ Orsay and Museé de l’ Orangerie

Organizer:

Artizon Museum, Museé d’ Orsay, Museé de l’ Orangerie, Nikkei Inc., BSTV Tokyo

Venue:

6-5F Gallery, Artizon Museum

Exhibition period:

July 11 (Saturday) – October 25 (Sunday), 2020
Closed on August 3, September 7, October 5, 2020

Opening hours:

10:00 – 18:00 (until 20:00 on Fridays) * Last admission 30 minutes
before closing.

For inquiries about the Artizon Museum, Ishibashi Foundation:
Artizon Museum Public Relations Dept.
E-mail: publicity@artizon.jp
1-7-2 Kyobashi, Chuo-ku, Tokyo 104-0031, Japan

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