Frédéric Bazille Family Reunion. 1867. Oil on canvas. 152 cm x 230 cm. ©RMN, Musée d’Orsay.

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. [Read more →]

The Tim Rogers Band perform at ‘Starry Nights’, an evening event hosted by the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra during the ‘Masterpieces from Paris’ exhibition – visit the NGA’s Facebook or Flickr pages for more of their photographs. @National Gallery of Australia

On Sunday evening, 5 pm local time, the doors finally closed at Canberra’s National Gallery of Australia on the ‘Masterpieces from Paris‘ exhibition. By all accounts, the exhibition closed on an incredible high for the Gallery. [Read more →]

“Reading Claude & Camille is like inhabiting an Impressionist painting filled with luscious, tactile imagery. But in this novel of passion and heartbreak, Stephanie Cowell never forgets the emotional price exacted by such vivid, trembling beauty.” Lauren Belfer, Author of City of Light.

Yesterday, Stephanie Cowell’s new novel, Claude & Camille: A Novel of Monet, was published by the prestigious New York publishers Crown. And today, a review copy arrived in Normandy, chez moi! I can not wait to get on with it. As soon as I have completed the novel I shall post a review here, and Stephanie Cowell has kindly agreed to a ‘Question and Answer’ post – so if any of you MGN readers have a question for Stephanie, please post it here and I shall be sure to include it. [Read more →]

Claude Monet. The Japanese Footbridge [Le Pont japonais]. c. 1920–22. Oil on canvas. 89.5 cm x 116.3 cm. © The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Grace Rainey Rogers Fund.

Review of ‘Monet’s Water Lilies’ at MoMA, New York

It took me a long time to get down to the much-loved exhibit of six of Monet’s late garden paintings, created in his 70s and 80s at Giverny. Fortunately, though the one large exhibit room was crowded, one could still spend some time with the paintings which I did. [Read more →]

Claude Monet. London, Parliament: sun through the fog
[Londres, le Parlement: trouée de soleil dans le brouillard]. 1904. Oil on canvas 81 cm x 92 cm. © Musée d’Orsay, Paris.

I recently visited Canberra and went to the National Gallery of Australia to see the Masterpieces from Paris: Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cézanne and beyond exhibition that is on loan from the Musée d’Orsay in Paris. This exhibition has attracted record-breaking attendances for an exhibition in that Gallery (it now stands in excess of 250,000 attendees). After Canberra the exhibition tours to Tokyo and San Francisco before returning to Paris. [Read more →]

“Clemenceau came to pay us a visit after lunch and stayed until 5 o’clock. … He was so amazed by the garden, and the water lilies, that he said to his daughter as he left: ‘You know, on the way home we are going to sell Bernouville, there is nothing more to be done after seeing Monet’s garden!’” Alice Monet, June 1909*

The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York, has in its collection a number of Claude Monet’s paintings of the pond he created, the water lilies and the Japanese bridge. These include the large triptych, Water Lilies (1914–26), a painting of the water lilies in the pond, Water Lilies (1914–26), The Japanese Footbridge (c. 1920–22) and Agapanthus (1914–26). [Read more →]