On March 28, the Hood Museum of Art debuted its new exhibit on Claude Monet, entitled “Monet: Reimaging the French Landscape.” Hood Museum curator of European Art Elizabeth Rice Mattison curated the exhibit, which explores Monet’s influence on impressionism. The exhibition inspires viewers to consider Monet’s impact on the art world through developing the style of impressionism.
Hood Museum Virginia Rice Kelsey 1961s Director John Stomberg praised the new exhibition on the Hood’s website.
“Since opening in 1985, the Hood Museum has held countless important exhibitions, but we have not yet had the opportunity to feature two major Monet paintings in our galleries,” Stomberg said. “What a way to celebrate!”
“Monet: Reimaging the French Landscape” incorporates six different pieces, including two by Claude Monet. The other four works were created by Maurice de Vlaminck, Armand Guillaumin, Achille Laugé and Pierre Eugène Montézin, who were all inspired by Monet. These artists adapted Monet’s style in unique ways, which is an artistic movement referred to as post-impressionism. All of the pieces depict idyllic, natural landscapes and feature the visible brushstrokes and dynamic lighting characteristics of impressionism.
“Impressionism is considered one of the most important schools of European painting in the late 19th and early 20th century,” Mattison said. “And so in bringing together these works — keeping in mind the way in which impressionism allowed artists to look again at a familiar landscape.”
The first piece by Monet on display in the exhibition illustrates his signature impressionist style. His 1872 work “Apple Trees in Bloom” portrays a tranquil apple orchard outside of Paris that Monet would frequent in order to get a sense of the lighting and color at play.
“This orchard where he’s painting these apple trees was the subject of several paintings that he made,” Mattison said. “This is one of several versions at the same spot, seeing it in different lights, seeing it in different weathers, [seeing] how the trees change from day to day.”
Mattison explained that Monet’s technique helped to capture the instantaneity of spring’s arrival and its fleeting blossoms.
The second piece by Monet on display, titled “The Road Near Giverny,” depicts a small stretch of road surrounded by nature in Giverny, a village in the Normandy region of France.
According to Mattison, Monet created a deeper emotional feeling of that scene rather than simply creating a facsimile of it.
“We can really imagine him sitting here on this roadside,” Mattison said. “It’s that kind of purplish dawn, so you still have traces of the sunrise just leaving the horizon here. You can almost imagine the way that the sun is kind of creeping over, and those shadows are going to shorten gradually on the roadside.”
Monet’s artistic evolution is apparent in this piece, which he painted nearly a decade after “Apple Trees in Bloom.” He displays more confidence with impressionism in this work, employing broader brush strokes and large swathes of various colors. The piece is stark in contrast to his earlier paintings, which are less experimental.
Both of these works, and impressionism in a broader sense, clashed with the rigid, realistic styles characteristic of academic painting in Monet’s time. Mattison said that despite the fact that impressionist paintings are considered incredibly traditional by today’s standards, this was not the case during Monet’s time. Applying the phrase “impressionist” to these works was initially considered an insult because they were considered unfinished.However, the impressionist movement eventually gained popularity and inspired more artists to explore this unconventional style. Four of the pieces from the exhibition display how different artists have interpreted impressionism.
“Saint-Maffre, after the Storm” by Maurice de Vlaminck features the aftermath of a village after a storm, and it adds its own twist to the distinctive impressionist style.
“You can see, he used a pretty chunky brush, and he’s just laying the paint on the canvas so quickly that you can feel the jagged rain coming down from the ceiling or from the sky as it’s receding into the distance of the hills behind the village,” Mattison said.
“The Ruins of Crozant Castle” by Armand Guillaumin offers a look at the ruins of a medieval castle in western France during autumn. Guillaumin sat on several different hills around the castle and painted it in different weather conditions, at different times of the day, according to Mattison. The final product is an abstract piece that places the viewer in France amidst a quaint autumn landscape.
Achille Laugé’s “Haystacks at Cailhau” depicts a farm in southern France in the midst of a summer haze. According to Mattison, viewers can sense the heat of the landscape through the use of yellow tonalities and large brushstrokes. Juxtaposed with the warm yellows of the field are several cooler blues, grays and purples of the shadows.
The final work in the exhibit — “The Shepherdess” by Pierre Eugène Montézin — blurs the lines between flora and fauna. The work depicts a shepherd and a dog sitting amongst a field laden with cows and fresh dew.
“The cows [are] so deconstructed into maybe eight to 10 brush strokes here give us a sense of continuity between painting the landscape and painting the animals,” said Mattison.
Sienna Aylaian ’28 visited the exhibition and appreciated the color palettes used by all of the artists.
“I feel that there's a lot of cool other tones in all of the pieces,” she said. “The way that things are blended makes it a little hazy, though the artists choose to blend certain parts of it with intention.”
This exhibit gives students like Aylaian and other Upper Valley residents a chance to experience Monet.
“Having Monet's work, which literally named the impressionist movement, on view in the Upper Valley is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” Stomberg said. “And everyone is invited.”
