Day 321 - Early Monet

 November 26. 2022

As I was walking down the long gallery toward today's destination, gallery 818, I glanced into gallery 809 and was surprised (okay, a little shocked) to see a number of paintings of male nudes,  most prominently, one  by Courbet of a lean young man, bent over with his backside toward the viewer and knee raised up on a stool.  I thought that surely I would have paid attention to this painting if I'd seen it before, but few of the paintings in the gallery looked familiar. (One that did was was the Degas male nude that I'd seen in gallery 815. )  I was curious, and slightly addled, enough to sit down and look at my blog entry about gallery 809,  and surmised that the gallery must have been completely rehung since I saw it three weeks ago.  I checked with a guard, who confirmed my suspicion, noting (a bit skeptically, I thought) that new curators have new and different ideas about what should go where.  (I can only speculate that the individual responsible for the rehanging is gay and enjoyed the prospect of startling museum viewers a bit with these paintings, grouped together under the rubric "Artists and Models.") What was more distressing was to learn that gallery 810, with its breathtaking collection of Manets, had also been rehung. Why, oh why, did the curator imagine that he (or she) could improve on what was already there? 

The rearrangement raises questions about the gallery-by-gallery organization of this blog. I've deliberately excluded those galleries dedicated exclusively to temporary exhibitions, but, in a sense. all the exhibitions are temporary: items are removed so that other items from the Met's vast collection can be put on display. I've been aware of this before now, but the gallery 809 example is really dramatic.  Since I haven't come to any decision about what to do with the blog once all my visits have been completed (let's hope I live that long!), I guess I shouldn't worry about the possible impermanence of the gallery-focused entries at this point.  After all, I've long been aware that I could start all over again and choose different objects in each gallery to write about.

Gallery 818 is devoted to early paintings by Monet. Like gallery 810, it's really quite wonderful, giving me a new sense of Monet's virtuosity in handling a paintbrush. "La Grenouillere," executed in 1869 and measuring about 48 inches wide and 28 inches high, is a case in point.  I can see just how Monet used long, thick horizontal strokes to create sun-dappled ripples in the Seine and short dabs to depict the leaves that frame the scene,  I can imagine how he moved a flat brush laden with green paint back and forth to form the trees in the background.  The palette is dark and cool, consisting largely of blues, greens, and browns, but enlivened by the white of the pavilion overhanging the water, a long expanse of white fabric wrapped around one of the pavilion's supporting columns, and a man's white trousers (how dapper!). Monet has made this boating and bathing place not far from Paris look at once stimulating and relaxing. 

A smaller work (perhaps 30 inches high and 24 inches wide), painted in 1880 and entitled "View of Vetheuil," is the Monet everyone loves. It's a scene suffused with sunlight; the blue sky is broken by puffy clouds, and you can practically feel the slight breeze that seems to ruffle the grass. The red dabs  that dot the foreground and suggest poppies are irresistible.  Aside from the square steeple that rises in the middle ground, the village of Vetheuil is barely visible. The painting is all about the pleasures of being outdoors.

"Apples and Grapes," made in 1879-1880 and measuring about 38 inches wide and 25 inches high, shows that Monet could paint still lifes, too. I'm wowed by the way that he captured the texture of the wicker basket laden with fruit,  the white-on-white checked pattern of the tablecloth, and the molding of the cabinet on which these items rest.  I can imagine that he created each grape individually by moving his brush in a circle, then highlighting each circle with a light-colored dab to  suggest the light playing on the fruit. The fact that the grapes look like Muscat grapes, one of my favorite varieties,  makes the picture all the more appealing!