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Visual Arts

Monet: The Late Years Blossoms at the Kimbell Art Museum

A retrospective of the impressionist's massive panoramas and dreamy easel paintings is now on view in Fort Worth.
By Micah Flores |
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Beloved painter and leader of the impressionist movement Oscar-Claude Monet returns to the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth for another captivating exhibition. A collection of more than 50 paintings opened to the public Sunday, June 16, all of which Monet painted during the last quarter-century of his life. The “sequel” to the Kimbell’s Monet: Early Years exhibition in 2016, this retrospective continues the visual narrative by highlighting works from the artist’s final phase of his career–it’s the first exhibition to do so in over 20 years. Expect to find joy in a reunion with some familiar faces, as well as excitement in the divergent and delightfully bold pieces from Monet’s late years.

Curator George T.M. Shackelford describes the first gallery as something like a “warm, cozy bath” of familiarity for the first-time viewer. Those familiar faces I mentioned before? Water Lilies. And this exhibition is full of them–20, to be exact. Upon entering the first room, the viewer is greeted by several large, dreamy canvases, each displaying soft, botanical greens, blues, pinks, and violets. Akin to others in the series, these paintings do without a horizon, relying on the water’s reflections of the sky and trees to orient the viewer. In this way, the pieces do not feel otherworldly, but like a glimpse of the world through Monet’s eyes.

Monet in his garden at Giverny, 1921. Courtesy of the Kimbell Art Museum.

“There’s no longer a horizon line. He’s shifted his view so that you can’t see much of the ‘real world’ that would normally be present,” Shackelford says. “The tree and the sky we’re seeing only through the water, the surface of the water. That’s what he’ll do again and again throughout this exhibition.”

Other recognizable subjects include landscapes and botanical studies from the artist’s garden. However, there is something worth noting here. Though these pieces display subject matter well known of Monet, they may surprise you with their sheer size. While the first few paintings are aisle-sized, the canvases grow larger as you move through the gallery, many measuring taller than the artist himself.

“Suddenly, in 1914 and moving into 1915, he quadruples the size of his canvases. If these are 30 by 30,” Shackelford says, gesturing to the now small-looking Water Lilies hanging by the entrance, “then the next ones are 60 by 60. You get here not only the enlargement of the canvas but the enlargement of everything else in the picture.”

Walking through the first gallery, I find myself feeling dwarfed by the magnitude of the paintings. Instead of a visitor walking through Monet’s garden, I feel like a small creature living inside it, having to crane my head upward to marvel at the entireties of the lush ponds and the tops of the agapanthus and iris blossoms.

Through the glass corridor into the second gallery, the real surprise awaits. A majority of these paintings date from the last decade of Monet’s life, as he coped with the deaths of his wife and son, war, and the gradual loss of his vision due to cataracts. Embarking on a stylistic reinvention, Monet’s painting progressively became bolder, more abstract.  The canvases scale back in size without losing the spirit of the previous works.

Some notable works from the second gallery include reimagined depictions of Japanese bridges, variations of the artist’s house, and weeping willows, of course. The Kimbell’s own Weeping Willow stands out from its proverbial cousins, and not just because of its newly acquired 17th-century giltwood frame (though I’ll admit, it helps). The painting, in a number of ways, embodies Monet’s stylistic evolution, from dreamy pastel waterlilies to larger-than-life yellow irises to looser, bolder, and somehow freer illustrations of his flora muses. The Weeping Willow, along with the other works within this gallery, embodies quite literally Monet’s “last strokes of genius.”

Monet: The Late Years is on view at the Kimbell through September 15, 2019. Tickets for adults are $18. Discounts are available for students, teachers, and SNAP Program Recipients. Admission is half-price all day Tuesday, and on Friday after 5 p.m.

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