Camille
Monet, Claude. The Seine at Lavacourt.
Dallas Museum of Art: Dallas, 1880.
In order to understand how influential these women in Monet’s life were, we must first examine his relationship to his first wife Camille, which actually proceeded the era of the Water Lilies. When she became ill, Monet reacted productively, as described Steven Z. Levine, author of “Monet, Madness, and Melancholy,� when he states, “Precipitated by the degenerative illness and lingering death of Camille, Monet’s response to the overwhelming demands and disappointments of daily life was to flee into his art� (Levine “Monet, Madness…� 124). Monet took the misfortunes associated with the impending loss of a loved one and distracted himself in his artwork. After her death in 1879, Monet experienced an intense sadness (Sagner 15). Weekes observed from his reaction that, “Monet was the kind of romantic figure whose work goes to pieces when a beloved wife dies� (Weekes 226). Despite his depression over the loss of Camille, Monet continued to produce paintings. A year later, he painted The Seine at Lavacourt (1880). Interestingly, this painting focused on the water, which Monet would later explain as a soothing source for exhaustion in a letter he wrote in 1882 (Levine Monet, Narcissus...). Monet’s reaction to Camille’s death is not as important as her effect that she had on him when she was alive. Camille inspired Monet to pursue artwork in her lifetime. Weekes affirmed, “Again and again he thinks of her…all of them had loved to be with here, to paint her. That was why he painted – ah, how he had painted!� (Weekes 238). Because of his wife’s motivation, Monet applied more effort to persevere at his work, which may have been one of the factors that influenced Monet to explore the series of water lilies with such rigor.
Suzanne
Monet, Claude. The Cloud.
Location unknown, 1903.
While Alice’s existence acted as an impetus for him to begin his focus on the water lilies, her daughter, Suzanne, affected Monet similarly in death. Ironically, she had almost driven him away from Giverny through her unapproved marriage to Theodore Butler in 1892 when alive (Stuckey 15) and before her death, he ceased to paint for eighteen months (Russell 50). The passing of Suzanne, one of Monet’s favorite stepchildren, brought great trauma upon the artist. As a result, he found peace in the water of his pond at Giverny, as he had similarly done with another body of water after the death of his former wife, Camille (Russell 50). He also felt the need to remain home to support Alice during the difficult times (Metropolitan 26). Monet did not allow such a loss to keep him from his work. “For the first time, he painted the water garden with real feeling,� according to Russell (Russell 50).
Monet, Claude. Water Lilies.
Museum of Fine Arts: Boston, 1907.
He painted the Water Lily Pond (1900)in which lilies (nympheas) are thought to symbolize the two “nymphs� in Monet’s life who had died, one of which being Suzanne (Russell 50). During the years following Suzanne’s death, Monet focused heavily on the subject matter of the water lilies and Japanese bridge, reworking the subject repeatedly as he had done with previous subjects away from home in order to achieve different effects based on light, time of day and year, and weather conditions. Levine compared such an obsession with repeating work to Lady Macbeth’s continual rewashing of her hands in the play, Macbeth (Levine “Monet, Madness…� 111). Both people acted in such a manner out of anxiety, in Monet’s case, resulting from the death of another loved one, Suzanne. Also notable in the paintings produced after Suzanne’s death is that “Everything…seems more calculated and precise than anything Monet had done earlier in the decade, as if the order he envisions here could me exacted by a painstaking but timely, combination of pure discipline and desire� (Tucker Monet in... 23). Each study of the pond at Giverny varied in some sense as Monet worked with multiple canvases to capture the different views that one observed from the same setting. This is illustrated in two different depictions of the water with water lilies are The Cloud (1903) and Water Lilies (1907). Between 1905 and 1907, Monet experimented with different angles, positions, viewpoints, and the contrast of color and light (Sagner 60). The years following Suzanne’s death were clearly quite productive for Monet.
Blanche
Monet and Blanche
(www.eugwiss.hdk-berlin.de/ schmid/diss/A.II.1.html)
Even more so than in other tragic losses in the past, Monet needed female support to motivate him to proceed with his Water Lilies paintings after Alice’s death. Blanche Hoschedé-Monet succeeded at this task, encouraging Monet to continue with a project he envisioned in the 1890s which would encircle a room with large panels of painted water lilies ("Monet, Claude..." 2). Monet originally abandoned the Grandes Décorations project in 1900 when he was distracted by the death of Suzanne (Russell 51). Such inspiration to begin work again came when Monet cleaned his house before Blanche moved it (Russell 71). In this case, Georges Clemenceau also deserves credit because he also had a role in helping Monet overcome his depression ("Monet, Claude..." 2). In his new studio, Monet completed this project between 1916 and 1921. Without the nudge by Blanche, Monet may have never produced such a masterpiece as Grandes Décorations (1921), which was exhibited in the Orangerie.