The first Claude Monet exhibition in Canada in almost 20 years is set to launch on Oct. 29 at the National Gallery of Canada, with 13 of the famed French impressionist’s paintings of bridges going on display.
Monet: The Bridge to Modernity will focus on the artist’s depictions of bridges between 1872 and 1875, when he stayed in the Paris suburb of Argenteuil, on the banks of the Seine, after the Franco-Prussian War.
One of the paintings to be exhibited, Le pont de bois (1872), is on long-term loan to the gallery from Jozef Straus, the director of VKS Art Inc. and a private collector. The other 12 artworks were gathered from collections around the world to explore Monet’s experiments with the motif of bridges and his concern about modern society.
“Our goal is to help people understand Monet more,” says Paul Lang, the deputy director and chief curator of NGC. “He is not only an orthodoxy impressionist artist, but he is also an artist concerning with history of his time.” He referred to the dramatic change of the 19th-century society reflected on Monet’s paintings.
It has been 15 years since the last time the gallery held an exhibition featuring Monet and Pierre-Auguste Renoir, two world-renowned 19th-century impressionist painters. That exhibition, entitled “Monet, Renoir, and the Impressionist Landscape”, attracted more than 170,000 visitors in 2000.
“ Monet and his impressionist colleagues all embrace the idea of modernity,” says Anbelle Kienle Poňka,, the NGC’s associate curator,” They welcomes all these elements (of modernity) such as symbols, and trains, in to their painting and depicted them deliberately.”
During his time Argenteuil, Monet became fascinated with the local highway and railway bridges located near his house, repeatedly returning to these subjects.
Monet was often joined on these painting excursions by the other artists, such as Alfred Sisley, Édouard Manet and Renoir. They held the first Impressionist exhibition, “Société anonyme des artistes, peintres, sculpteurs, graveurs, etc.” in 1874 in Paris, which scholars considered the moment the Impressionism movement was born.
Monet’s paintings of the Argenteuil bridges are considered the most experimental and innovative compositions of his early career, according to Anabelle Kienle Poňka.
In Le pont de bois, Monet painted a highway bridge under repair after being damaged in the Franco-Prussian War. At the centre of picture is the wooden structure of the bridge and scaffolding, reflecting in the water, with bustling workers crossing on foot or by carriage, while in the distance a steamboat is going on a journey in the sunset.
“It is not only beautiful, but also telling us what is going in the French society at the end of the 19th century,” says Lang, referring to both the artistic and historical value of Le pont de bois (1872).
Lang says he first saw Le pont de bois at an exhibition of Gustav Rau’s collection at the Musée du Luxembourg in Paris in December 2000.
The picture left him with such deep impression, Lang says, that he waited for years until the picture came on the art market and urged a private Canadian collector to bid on it for almost $10 million. Once the masterpiece was acquired, the collector agreed in 2013 to place it on long-term loan to the gallery in 2013.
At the time, the gallery already had five major Monet artworks, but all of them were painted after 1880s, so Le pont de bois is the first early painting by the artist on long-term display at the gallery.
“It really is a masterpiece of early Monet, which is a missing painting in our collection,” says Lang, talking about distinction of the painting from the others in NGC.
“In aspects of both subject and artistic style, Le pont de bois speaks to modern realities and ideas,” adds Brian Foss, director of Carleton’s School of Studies in Art and Culture. He points to Monet’s use of light, blurred detail and draftsmanship as interesting features of the painting.
Along with Monet’s paintings, NGC will also present some 19th-century photographs, illustrations, guidebooks, Japanese prints and postcards to illuminate the historic, sociological and artistic context of the early years of Impressionism.
The exhibition will run until Feb. 15, with a series of related activities, including a public lecture by Poňka on Oct. 31.
“ My hope is that people will really take a time to look at the work individually as they were,” says Poňka,” In this case, I mean that let’s take a time to let the painting really come close to us, and have sort of meditation and reflection.”