Who doesn't know Claude Monet's (1840-1926) famous Water Lilies? His explosions of colour on canvas immerse everyone in a sea of reflections, until it is impossible to know where water starts and sky ends.
The garden paintings, of which three hundred works depict the lily pond, are regarded as Claude Monet's chef-d'oeuvre. The artist commenced these works in the 1890s but produced the majority of the paintings during the final two decades of his life. His early paintings of the lily pond embraced the conventional spatial boundaries of water, surrounding land and horizon. Yet the longer Monet worked, the more the boundaries began to blur, until the pond became the universe: its scope immeasurable and defined exclusively by light.
Monet's influence was tremendous. His unique colour palette, vision and approach changed the course of Western art. Many artists have been influenced by Monet, whose techniques inspired both the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists, including Vincent van Gogh. In terms of form and scale, the artist's work directly influenced Abstract Expressionists such as Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko. Andy Warhol once attested to the fact that his multiple renditions of a single subject were inspired by the French painter. It is also true to say that Monet laid the groundwork for the Minimalist movement that emerged in the 1960s.
Still extremely popular in his own right, Monet continues to define both the public's appreciation of art and the perception of beauty in its purest form.
The last major Monet exhibitions in the Netherlands were staged at the Gemeentemuseum in 1952 and the Van Gogh Museum in 1986. The majority of his famous garden paintings, which had a profound influence on Rothko and Pollock, for example, have never been exhibited in the country. High time, therefore, for a majestic tribute at the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag (12 October 2019 until 2 February 2020) and a new accompanying catalogue.
