Feeling the art of Monet in Giverny
September 26, 2004 | 12:00am
I had seen the home of French artist Claude Monet before – in photographs, in books, in my dreams.
Dreamt about scrutinizing his beautiful paintings in his studio. Imagined myself sitting in his yellow dining room for a sip – rather, sniff – of his favorite wines. And visualized myself walking through his lovely garden.
Finally, on a recent trip to Paris via Air France, I visited the house of Monet. I wanted to feel the heart of his art.
So I bought a tour to Giverny by bus from Paris Vision at 60 euros. The whole trip from Paris to Giverny and back, plus the tour of Giverny, would last only four and a half hours.
Fine. But feeling the heart of his art, I found out wasn’t that easy. The drive through the Normandy highway towards the charming country village makes you think you’d be transported to a serene isolated place. After all, you read that streets in Giverny hadn’t changed since the Middle Ages – street names include Candlemaker Street, Street of the Jews and Tithe Barn Lane.
There, you’ll discover that your busload of tourists will meet hundreds more. So many dreamers wanting to see the place where a man breathed art and lived art. The lines of tourists though, are orderly, perhaps too orderly that you breeze in and out of Giverny’s house too fast.
Much of the art you wanted to scrutinize turn out to be repros. But of course. The real and precious Monets are better kept in tightly-guarded museums. As for the wines, only empty bottles are there, and Monet’s china and silverware so vividly shown in books are stored away from itchy hands of tourists with a passion for "collecting."
What is the most doable is your dream of strolling through Giverny’s huge, labyrinthine garden. You have almost a whole hour to do so. That is, if you resist the temptation of lingering in the huge souvenir shop where an eyeful of items – from floral linen stuff to Monet prints are artfully laid out.
We resisted, and instead spent all the time gazing at every nook and flower at Giverny.
The pink, stucco walls and green window shutters are there at the façade, just like in the books. But gone inside the house are the picture-pretty details such as dinner settings so marvelously photographed in books.
So this was where leading lights in the City of Lights sat for dinners with Monet such as Auguste Renoir, Edgar Degas, Alfred Sisley, Camille Pissarro and Berthe Mousot.
These were the Impressionists, a term coined by art critic Louis Leroy in his derogatory review after viewing Monet’s painting of the docks in his Le Havre hometown entitled "Impression: Sunrise."
Another critic, Albert Wolff, so harshly wrote in Le Figaro: "These so-called artists . . . take a canvas, some paint and brushes, fling a few colors about at random, then sign the result . . . What an appalling example of human vanity, taken to the pitch of insanity!"
But the Impressionists eventually became the toast of Paris critics so in 1890, Monet was able to buy the Giverny house for 22,000 francs.
Monet used to share a home with his wife Camille and their two children. He and his family often met in Paris with Ernest and Alice Hoschede and their six children. Ernest was a wealthy businessman who bought a lot of Monet’s works.
Monet’s wife Camille died, and Ernest became bankrupt, despondent and ill. Eventually, Monet and Alice ended up being together, with all eight children combined under one roof in Giverny.
Monet loved the shifting quality of light in this village, and the peaceful waters of Epte. In 1901, Monet got permission to divert these waters to his huge Giverny garden to create a pond. There, he planted weeping willows, poplars, rare lilies, azaleas rhododendrons and roses. He built a green Japanese bridge, planting white and mauve wisterias around it.
It was here where Monet’s most ambitious project, "Grandes Decorations des Nympheas," was completed.
Monet’s fascination for the Orient is seen not only in this Japanese bridge, but also inside his house. In his dining room and all over the house, he displayed Japanese prints. The story goes that Monet once went to a grocery in Holland where purchases were wrapped by the owner in paper printed with Japanese art. Monet saw a whole pile of prints, bought a lot and framed the prints for his walls.
That time, dining rooms were usually done in the 16th century style favored by the petit bourgeois. Ornate Louis XVI furniture was in vogue, and Art Nouveau with its exuberant flowers and leaves was becoming popular.
But Monet preferred to do his own style. He painted his dining room bright yellow and his drawing room blue, for instance. His bedrooms were simple and elegant.
Monet and his second wife Alice were great connoisseurs of food and wine. Along with his literary collection (he loved the poet Stephane Mallarme and novelists Guy de Maupassant, was an admirer of Flaubert, Balzac, Tolstoy, Ibsen and Edgar Allan Poe) were books on cooking and botany. He ordered wines from Burgundy and Bourdeaux and kept these in his cellar.
Dining was not only beautiful (he loved using elegant china and always with fresh flowers from his garden) it was also always punctually at dawn, 11:30 a.m. and 7:30 p.m. A gong would be struck twice to summon everyone to eat.
For 43 years, Monet’s house in Giverny became a haven for artists. The whole garden itself was a work of art. "The garden is Monet," an art critic wrote.
Monet’s artistic visions, however were marred later in life, quite literally when Monet suffered failing eyesight and was operated on for cataract. In 1926, he died at the age of 86. "He was driving a bicycle and got into a vehicular accident," said our tourist guide.
I would have preferred to hear that Monet passed away in his studio with a brush in one hand and colors in the other, his heart heavy with too much passion.
For the heart of his art is so strongly felt in his house of bright colors and his garden of many blooms.
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