Honfleur is a quaint seaside town on the Normandy coast. It is a popular tourist attraction today, and deservedly so. There are traditional narrow, cobble-stone streets that are still lined with old timber-frame houses that lead away from a 17th Century harbour. A wonderful setting for a few days holiday, or a great day out. Monet was also inspired by Honfleur, and that part of the Normandy coast.

Monet visited Honfleur a number of times, and painted a handful of canvasses there. Above is his painting of the bell-tower, Le clocher Sainte Catherine, a wooden belfry and bell-ringer’s home, that unusually stands apart from the church.

Today the bell-tower is an annex of the Eugène Boudin Museum. The main galleries of the museum that houses an impressive collection of pre-impressionist and impressionist paintings are located in the Augustine church and a few modern extensions. The bell-tower houses work of a religious nature, such as sculptures and other local religious items.

The Museum has 92 works by Eugène Boudin, who was born in Honfleur. And it was Boudin as Monet’s mentor who encouraged the young Claude Monet to paint outdoors. This wonderful collection of Boudin’s is displayed alongside that of his friends, such as Mozin, Monet, Dubourg, Jongkind, Pécrus, Courbet, and Cals; all well-known local artists from the 19th century.

Honfleur is well worth a visit, as is a visit to the Musée Eugène Boudin – for more information about the museum, such as prices and opening dates and times, follow this link.

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It was in Paris that a young Claude Monet met other like minded artists, a group that would go on to create what is generally accepted to be the most popular styles of art, that is Impressionism. It is only fitting then that for Monet fans visiting Paris today there are now some of the best permanent collections of his work on show. The three museums not to miss are the Musée de l’Orangerie, Musée d’Orsay and Musée Marmottan Monet.

Musée Marmottan Monet

First impressions aside, the Musée Marmottan Monet in Paris has the World’s largest collection of Monet’s paintings, drawings and other personal effects. The building was originally a Duke’s hunting lodge when it was located on the edge of the Bois du Boulogne. It then became a museum to the First Empire. Following two substantial donations the museum became known for its Impressionist collection and its collections of Monet’s works.

Doctor Georges de Bellio, who was physician to the likes of Manet, Monet, Pissaro, Sisley and Renoir, as well as one of the early supporters of the so-called Impressionist movement, had an impressive collection of the Impressionists works. In 1957 his daughter gave this collection to the Marmottan Museum. This donation was followed in 1966 by a donation from, Claude Monet’s second son, Michel Monet, of his collection of his father’s work.

Together these two donations created the world’s largest collection of Monet paintings. It is here that you can view the painting that gave the Impressionist movement its name.

Claude Monet, Impression Soleil Levant, 1872. Oil on Canvas 48 cm x 63 cm. @ Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris.

The museum is open every day except Monday (and 1 January, 1 May and 25 December) from 11 am to 6 pm, except on Tuesdays when it is open until 9 pm. For more information visit the Museum’s website.

Musée de l’Orangerie

Located on the Place de la Concorde, the Orangerie, which once the orangerie of the Tuileries Palace, now houses the series of 8 large water lily paintings known as the Nympheas that Monet gave to the state to celebrate victory in 1918.

The museum is open every day except Tuesday (and 1 May and 25 December) from 9 am to 6 pm. For more information visit the Museum’s website.

Musée d’Orsay

Once one of Paris’s grand railway stations, the Musée d’Orsay is probably the most well known of the three museums that house collections of Monet in Paris. Today this museum houses what is the national collection of Monet’s work, as well as many other French Impressionist artists. Undergoing renovation in 2010, the new galleries and layout due to re-open in 2011 promise to do the impressionist work great justice.

The painting collection of the museum is quite impressive, as it has its origins in the Musée de Luxembourg, founded in 1818 by Louis XVIII. Being a national museum, the museum also houses other substantial collections of sculpture, photography and graphic arts. The museum has in its collection Monet’s Poppies at Argenteuil, the most reproduced Impressionist painting.

Claude Monet, Poppies at Argenteuil, 1873. Oil on canvas 50 cm x 65 cm. @Musée d’Orsay, Paris.

The museum is open daily except Monday (and 1 January, 1 May and 25 December) from 9.30 am to 6 pm, except on Thursdays when it is open late until 9.45 pm. For more information visit the Museum’s website.

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Not surprisingly there have been a great many number of books written about the Impressionists and their gardens. Monet not only created his garden, he made his garden famous by painting it and the various parts of it over and over again. Until now, however, there has not been an exhibition that focuses specifically on the Impressionist artists and their gardens. A major, new exhibition, jointly organised by the National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh (31 July – 17 October 2010) and Museo Thyssen–Bornemisza, Madrid (16 November 2010 – 13 February 2011), Impressionist Gardens, will change this.

Impressionist Gardens is a collection of over 90 paintings brought together from collections around the world that is specifically devoted to exploring the significance, the origins, and the influence of the Impressionist garden.

Obviously it was the great names in Impressionism, such as Monet, Pissarro, Renoir, Manet and Sisley who were responsible for this new way of painting the garden. A continued significance of which can be seen in the work of artists such as Cézanne and Bonnard, who followed immediately after the Impressionists. The influence of this new trend can then be seen in the way in which these ideas spread to other European and American artists, such as van Gogh, Gauguin, Klimt and Sargent, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Besides this truly ground-breaking exhibition, a number of complementary events and activities have been organised by the Royal Botanical Gardens in Edinburgh.

Impressionist Gardens is on show in Edinburgh at the National Galleries of Scotland from 31 July through to 17 October 2010, when it will then move to Madrid and the Museo Thyssen–Bornemisza (16 November 2010 – 13 February 2011). This will be the only venue in the UK to show the exhibition. For information about the exhibition time, including prices, opening times and buying tickets, visit the National Gallery of Scotland’s website, click here.

You can buy your copy of the exhibition catalogue before your visit from Amazon, cheaper than at the Gallery:

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I could go on talking about Monet for hours! I’m absolutely fascinated by this artist and by the way he painted. His paintings about his gardens in Giverny are mystical and mysterious, but also experimental and he kept studying on them. He could dive into a subject and paint it over and over to make it look exactly like the vision he had in mind. Monet was one of the first abstract painters, he was keen on experimenting and creating a new art movement. Arne Quinze

The city of Rouen is one of a number of towns and cities in Normandy taking part in one of the greatest festivals in celebration of Impressionism and the Impressionist artists in 2010. To mark this occasion in a grand way, Arne Quinze was commissioned to create an installation; he created Camille for Rouen, a tribute to Camille Doncieux, Claude Monet’s wife.

This amazing installation has been constructed out of ’sticks’ of wood that creates a kind of canopy over the Boieldieu Bridge that spans the River Seine. The official launch of Arne Quinze’s Camille in Rouen was at the beginning of July, and it will remain in place until the end of August.

Read more about the artwork in an interview on the Irenebrination: Notes on Art, Fashion and Style website with Arne Quinze about Camilleand Rouen here. (From where the above quote from Quinze was taken.)

I took the following photographs on Bastille Day, 14 July 2010, in the afternoon and then in the evening during the spectacular firework display that lasted for some 25 minutes.

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The Birth of Impressionism exhibition currently showing at the de Young Museum in San Francisco is a big deal. Don’t let anyone convince you otherwise. Make sure you visit the show this summer, or you may miss out on the most important show this museum has hosted since reopening its doors in 2005.

Nearly 100 Impressionist works of art been sent to the de Young from the Musee d’Orsay, which is benefitting from a renovation. And these are paintings that will not disappoint. With artwork by Degas, Manet, Monet and Renoir, just to name a few, how can one be unfulfilled after a visit? The most difficult question this exhibition raises is deciding when to return for a second or third viewing.

As you enter the galleries, you can feel the importance of the artwork surrounding you. The paintings are displayed in a manner similar to how they will be once the renovation at the d’Orsay is complete. Wooden floors and carefully chosen wall colors allow the paintings to really pop and express themselves. Think of this when you come to The Floor Scrapers by Gustave Caillebotte. The browns and whites on the canvas appear so rich they practically glisten.

What did surprise me about this show was the piece I left still thinking about. While it was very exciting to see Arrangement in Grey and Black: The Artist’s Mother (a.k.a Whistler’s Mother) by James McNeill Whistler, and Rue Montorgueil, Paris. Festival of June 30, 1878 by Claude Monet, in person, they weren’t new discoveries, as I had seen reproductions many times before. The painting I am still thinking about, and will return to see is the Family Reunion by Frédéric Bazille. Dying a tragic early death during the Franco-Prussian War, Bazille is known for painting en plein air, and this is the first opportunity I had to see one of his paintings in person. I was struck by the direct awkwardness of this painting. In it, you can see an artist who is still struggling to find his style, and unfortunately never had the chance to. I wanted to stare at this piece all day.

If you need any reason to visit San Francisco this summer, the Birth of Impressionism is it. As an encore, there will be a second exhibition from the d’Orsay in the fall, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cézanne and Beyond. The de Young had the distinction of being the only museum in North America to host this upcoming show, and the only museum in the world to host both of these traveling exhibitions from the d’Orsay.

Ashley Harrop is an Art Historian living in San Francisco and produces the No Onions Extra Pickles travel blog.

Gustave Caillebotte Les raboteurs de parquet (The Floor Scrappers). 1875. Oil on canvas. 102 cm x 146.5 cm. ©RMN, Musée d’Orsay.

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I have just returned from a few days in the Loire Valley where I stayed with friends who run a wonderful and highly recommendable French holiday gite. The Loire Valley is World renown for its wine and historical architecture – most notably the extravagant castles, but it also has an impressionist connection. The above painting is of the castle at Saumur, painted from the left bank of the Loire River by William Turner, a British Romantic painter whose work is often regarded as a forerunner to French Impressionism.

The view today of Saumur from the left bank of the Loire River Turner painted in the late 1820s.

William Turner is widely credited with having raised the profile of ‘landscape painting’ to rival the so-called ‘history painting. He was both fascinated and preoccupied with light, and although well-known for his oil paintings (above), he is also considered one of the greatest British watercolour landscape artists (see below). Not surprisingly he became known of as the ‘painter of light’. Equally unsurprising then is the fact that Turner was greatly admired by Claude Monet and the other French impressionist painters, also concerned with the effects of light on a subject, as well as painting ‘en plein air’ (in the open).

A watercolour by William Turner of Saumur from the right bank of the Loire River (Tate Collection).

There is some discussion and debate about the exact date of these paintings. We know Turner travelled from Nantes to Orleans along the Loire River in 1826. And it was the sketches he made on that journey that formed the basis of the paintings reproduced here (and others). The watercolour appeared in ‘Turner’s Annual Tour – the Loire’, which was published in 1833. It is, however, generally accepted that the paintings were finished before 1830.

An oil by Turner from the right bank of the Loire River.

The Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, Texas, will host a major exhibition of French Impressionist and Post-Impressionist masterpieces from the collections of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. for the first half of 2011.

The Houston show will have a selection of 50 paintings from the National Gallery of Art´s 19th century French collection while the galleries that usually house these works are closed for repair and renovation. The National Gallery´s Impressionist and Post-Impressionist collection includes work from the greatest artists active in France from the mid 19th century to the early 20th century, a collection that ranks amongst the finest of any collection in the world. These include works by Cézanne, Degas, Manet, Monet, Renoir, Toulouse-Lautrec, and Van Gogh.

‘Impressionist and Post-Impressionist Masterpieces from the National Gallery of Art’ is to be installed in the MFAH’s European galleries, Audrey Jones Beck Building. The MFAH’s collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art will be kept on display for the duration of the temporary exhibition. But, about 50 works from other periods will be temporarily removed to make way for the loan pieces.

To accompany the exhibition will be a 184-page, fully illustrated book that provides a history of the collection and individual entries on each painting.

The exhibition opens 20 February, and runs through to 22 May 2011. Entry will be by timed-entry tickets, and these go on sale from 13 December 2010. Click here to link through to the Museum of Fine Arts’ website.

Claude Monet, Woman with a Parasol —Madame Monet and Her Son, 1875. Oil on canvas, 19.48 cm x 24 cm @ The National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

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Claude Monet is not only well known for his paintings of the water lilies on the ponds he created in his Garden at Giverny, he also painted numerous fields of poppies, while living in Argenteuil and later in Giverny. No visit to Giverny in June or July should miss the many poppy fields surrounding the village.

One of the most well known of all of Monet’s paintings, mainly because it is the most reproduced of all his paintings, is a field of poppies he painted while living in Argenteuil; a painting that was included in the First Impressionist Exhibition in Paris of 1874.

The painting above is of a field to the south of Giverny. Fields of poppies are typical in Normandy, and if you visit Giverny during June and July you will be able to see some fields of poppies yourself and experience for yourself what it is that captivated Monet. I took the photograph below at the beginning of July, under quite a dramatic sky. This particular field lies beyond the car park and the picnic area, to the south of Giverny and Monet’s garden.

The following two paintings by Monet were made from a vantage point above his house, Le Pressoir, in 1885 and 1886 respectively, shortly after he arrived in Giverny with his family, and before he got going with constructing his ponds.

Claude Monet, Champs de coquelicots à Giverny. 1885. Oil on canvas. 60 x 73 cm. © Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond. The Mellon Collection of French Art.
This was one of the first of Monet’s paintings to be purchased by an American collector, having received widespread recognition at its USA premiere in 1886. It is one of four paintings of poppy fields made by Monet in the summer of 1885 in Giverny.

Claude Monet, La Meule de foin (Haystack). 1886. Oil on canvas. 61 x 81 cm. © State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg.

Claude Monet, Champs de coquelicots à Giverny. 1885. Oil on canvas. 65 x 81 cm. © Musée des Beaux-Arts et de la Céramique, Rouen.
Another of the four paintings of poppy fields in Giverny painted in the summer of 1885. This one is taken from the plains to the south of Giverny, looking towards the village.

The two museums that make up the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, the de Young and the Legion of Honor, are hosting concurrently two exhibitions on Impressionist art. The Birth of Impressionism exhibition at the de Young has one hundred masterpieces from the Musée d’Orsay. And, to provide a historical context to these well-known paintings, the Legion of Honor is hosting Impressionist Paris: City of Light.

With the invention and installation of the gas street lamp in the nineteenth century, Paris earned itself the name ‘city of light’. The street lights and their evening glow attracted a great deal of attention from various artists, authors, composers, but particularly visual artists, including painters, sculptors, printmakers, and photographers. And it was at about this time that the group of painters who would come to be known as the Impressionists were starting out in Paris.

The exhibition at the Legion of Honor explores various aspects of Parisian society and French art from about 1850 through to the end of the nineteenth century. On show are more than 180 prints, paintings, drawings, photographs, as well as illustrated books dating from 1850 to the early 1900s, taken from the permanent collection of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, and other distinguished private collections.

There are picturesque, old views of the narrow streets and stone bridges by Charles Marville and Charles Meryon as well as colorful images of a more modern Parisian setting by such artists as Edgar Degas, Pierre Bonnard, Edouard Vuillard, and Georges Seurat. Various prints and periodicals which feature the work of Honoré Daumier, Edouard Manet, Paul Signac, and James Tissot convey significant events in the rise of illustrated art journalism. Black-and-white works on paper by Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Mary Cassatt, and Paul Gauguin reveal another aspect of Parisian culture at this time. There are also galleries that are devoted to popular entertainment in late 19th-century Paris, including colorful images of the theater, café-concerts, circus, as well as the Expositions Universelles. The exhibition concludes with a colourful selection of posters from the turn of the 20th century by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Jules Chéret, Théophile Steinlen, and Alphonse Mucha.

“This exhibition gives us a special opportunity to show off some of the Fine Arts Museums’ greatest treasures from its holdings of 19th-century French works on paper, including an outstanding group of new acquisitions that will be shown here for the first time,” says exhibition curator James A. Ganz. “It is conceived as a journey from the dark alleys of ‘Old Paris,’ at the dawn of the Impressionist era, to a world of color and light, culminating in a gallery of vibrant French posters from the turn of the 20th century.”

Charles Marville, Street lamp, 8 Place de l’Opera, 1870s. Albumen silver print from wet-colldion-on-glass negative © The Legion of Honor.

Impressionist Paris: City of Light at the Legion of Honor, Fine Arts Museum San Francisco, runs from 5 June to 26 September 2010.

Click here, for more information about the exhibition on the Legion of Honor’s website. If you have seen the exhibition, leave a comment below.

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Oh to be in San Francisco this summer! The beautiful West Coast city aside, the two Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, the de Young and the Legion of Honor, are hosting two major Impressionist exhibitions. At de Young is Birth of Impressionism: Masterpieces from the Musée d’Orsay, while the Legion of Honor is hosting Impressionist Paris: City of Light, a special exhibition that provides historical background to de Young’s Birth of Impressionism show.

Through one hundred paintings of some of the great artists living and painting in France from the mid to late nineteenth century this exhibition demonstrates the changes that took place in Western art at this time, i.e. the birth of what was to be called Impressionism.

The following is a list of just a few of the paintings on display at de Young this summer:
The Fife Player by Edouard Manet (1866)
Racehorses Before the Stands by Edgar Degas (1866–1868)
Family Reunion by Frédéric Bazille (1867)
The Magpie by Claude Monet (1868)
The Cradle by Berthe Morisot (1872)
The Dancing Lesson by Edgar Degas (1873–1876)
The Floor Scrapers by Gustave Caillebotte (1875)
The Swing by Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1876)
Red Roofs, Corner of the Village, Winter Effect by Camille Pissarro (1877)
Saint-Lazare Station by Claude Monet (1877)
Rue Montorgueil, Paris. Festival of June 30, 1878 by Claude Monet (1878)
Snow at Louveciennes by Alfred Sisley (1878)
L’Estaque by Paul Cézanne (1878–1879)
Portraits at the Stock Exchange by Edgar Degas (1878–1879)
The Birth of Venus by William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1879)

An impressive list of artists and paintings indeed!

Claude Monet. Rue Montorgueil, Paris. Festival of June 30, 1878. 1878. Oil on canvas. 49 cm x 80 cm. ©RMN, Musée d’Orsay.

Birth of Impressionism: Masterpieces from the Musée d’Orsay at de Young runs from 22 May through to 6 September, 2010. This exhibition will be followed by Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cézanne and Beyond: Post-Impressionist Masterpieces from the Musée d’Orsay, 25 September 2010 until 18 January 2011.

Click here, for more information about the exhibition. If you have seen the exhibition, leave a comment below.

Get your copy of the exhibition catalogue from Amazon before you go:

Looking for a hotel in San Francisco? Booking.com has over 150 Hotels in San Francisco to choose from. This is one of the leading international hotel comparison websites: making a reservation is easy, and if necessary so is changing your reservation. Once you make your reservation, you will receive all the necessary contact details by email.