When Light Meets Water: Monet on the Mediterranean
Just when you think that Claude Monet's light-filled works have been examined from every possible perspective, an exhibition comes along that provides an entirely original feast for the eyes. In this case, the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas, has organized a show that deals exclusively with the considerable challenges faced by Monet when he painted the sun-drenched vistas of the Mediterranean world. After joining his friend Pierre-Auguste Renoir on a brief scouting trip to the south in 1883, he left his beloved Giverny three times for extended working sojourns in the region first, to the fishing village of Bordighera on the Italian Riviera in 1884; then, to Antibes and the French Riviera in 1888; and, finally, to Venice in 1908, where he captured the shimmering reflections of the Doges' Palace from his makeshift studio aboard a moored gondola. "I'm fencing and wrestling with the sun," he wrote a friend on one of his trips. "In order to paint here, one would need gold and precious stones."
Of the 125 paintings Monet produced during the three trips, the Kimbell has brought together 71. After its showing there from June 8 to September 7, "Monet and the Mediterranean" will travel to the Brooklyn Museum of Art, where