Monet and Venice, Brooklyn Museum

Claude Monet. Venice, Palazzo Dario, 1908. Oil on canvas. The Art Institute of Chicago, Mr. and Mrs. Lewis Larned Coburn Memorial Collection, 1933.446. (Photo: The Art Institute of Chicago / Art Resource, NY)

By Bob Dunlap

On October 1, 1908, Claude Monet, nearly 68 years old, and his wife, Alice, arrived in Venice by train.  Initially reluctant to leave his home in Giverny, on the Seine River, near his beloved water lily pond, which he had painted repeatedly, if not obsessively,  Monet eventually succumbed to the siren call of a city even more encompassed by water.  Invited by arts patron Mary Hunter, The Monets initially stayed at her Palazzo Barbaro, later moving to the Grand Hotel Britannia.   After a week spent touring the city’s architectural grandeur and cruising the canals by gondola, Monet declared Venice “too beautiful to be painted.”  But paint he did, beginning a series of over thirty paintings, working en plein air, or at times “plein water,” painting aboard a gondola on the Grand Canal.  Monet adhered to a strict schedule, moving from canvas to canvas, location to location, spending two hours per place, following the sun.

After some ten weeks, Monet shipped his unfinished canvases back to France, and he and Alice returned to Giverny.  Alice soon fell ill, however, and the canvases remained untouched for years.  In 1911, Alice died.  Bereft, Monet returned to the Venetian canvases and finished them in his Giverny studio.  In 1912, twenty-nine of the completed works were shown in Paris, Monet’s final exhibition of new work.  Now, for the first time in over a century, nineteen of these paintings are reunited in an exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum, “Monet in Venice.” 

Claude Monet. The Church of San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice, 1908. Oil on canvas. Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields, The Lockton Collection

The Brooklyn Museum is New York’s second-largest, and it uses its space cleverly.  A visitor to the Monet exhibition is directed to the 5th floor, where, upon exiting the elevator, one is first introduced to a large wall placard describing the museum’s curatorial philosophy in presenting frameworks for their presentations to provide cultural context.  The first such framework is, appropriately, “Trouble The Water,” where one get’s their feet wet, if you will, on such works as Georgia O’Keeffe’s “Fishhook from Hawaii” (1939), Winslow Homer’s “Shooting the Rapids” (1902) and, zeroing in on the viewer’s current location, John Koch’s “East River (1936-1940).

John Koch, East River, 1936-1940

Finally wading into the Monet exhibit, one is first immersed in a photo montage of Venice itself – nothing painted, nothing by Monet – merely a rotating slide show of images projected on the surrounding walls, deepening the sense of entering a new place, a new city, and acting as a spillway into the next area, a display of other painters’ versions of Venice, from John Singer Sargent to Pierre-Auguste Renoir to the aptly named Giovanni Antonio Canal (“Canaletto”), who took a very realistic approach to capturing the city.

Canaletto, Entry to the View of the Entrance to the Venetian Arsenal, 1732

The tide rises as we are introduced to Monet’s pre-Venetian works, including his famous water lilies, of course, but also an intriguing painting of the Seine frozen, capturing water as solid, liquid, and vapor in the clouds above.

The Breakup of the Ice (1880).

The pièce de résistance awaits:  a circular room, not unlike a tank in an aquarium, albeit viewed from within, complete with blue walls and blue carpeting, with Monet’s Venice paintings displayed in the round.  The experience moves from immersive to submersive as one views the works while seemingly underwater, an effect heightened by Monet’s Impressionist style.   And just as light traveling from air into water slows down, causing it to change direction, or refract, so too does the room’s effect cause the viewer to slow down, to reflect on the shimmering beauty of Monet’s work.  

Claude Monet. Palazzo Ducale, 1908. Oil on canvas. Brooklyn Museum, Gift of A. Augustus Healy, 20.634. (Photo: Brooklyn Museum)

Monet painted several versions of the same scenes, capturing the light at different times of day, cast at different angles by the sun, observing the various effects the light has on objects and their reflections.  While Monet painted the churches and palaces in a classic Impressionist style, with loose brushstrokes and vibrant colors, the images reflected in the water are abstracted nearly to the point of Expressionism.                        

Claude Monet. The Grand Canal, Venice, 1908. Oil on canvas.

Displaying three versions of the same scene side by side creates a triptych of sorts, the subtle, hazy differences in each underscored by seeing them in succession, as if the light were changing in real time.  All done in oil, of course, though the effect smacks of watercolor, as seems appropriate.

The show ends February 1, 2026.  If you have the opportunity to visit New York City, swim, don’t walk, to the Brooklyn Museum to see this mesmerizing art historical exhibition.