Monet in Normandy
David Steel Interview - Larry Wheeler Interview

Interview with David Steel, PhD., Curator of European Art, North Carolina Museum of Art

UNC-TV:  Why did the North Carolina Museum of Art decided to do a special Monet exhibition?

Steel:  Well, I think every museum wants to do an Impressionist show or a Monet show because he’s the most popular artist in the world right now. And especially for our audience, there’s never been an Impressionist show in Raleigh. There’s never been a Monet exhibition in the Southeast. So, we at the North Carolina Museum of Art were fortunate to have two beautiful Monets, and so I went to my director, Dr. Wheeler, and I said, “Larry, I’ve been thinking about doing a focus exhibition on one of our Monets, maybe bring together five or ten other paintings, and it will be a nice focus show. I’ll write something, you know, intellectual or art historical about it, and people can go from there.” And Larry just said, “No, we are not going to do a show like that. This is our chance to do a really spectacular blockbuster exhibition on Monet.”

I found that no one had ever done a Monet in Normandy show. And do you know, Normandy is in Monet’s blood. You know, he moved there when he was a child. He spent the bulk of his life in Normandy. And so I thought, “Wow, this is great.” And most importantly for me, the paintings are fabulous.

UNC-TV:  Why did you focus on his work in Normandy?

Steel:  Well, Normandy is at the heart of his art. In fact, the painting that gave Impressionism its name is a Normandy picture. Monet moved there when he was five years old. He spent 60 some odd years painting in Normandy, so that it covers the whole of his career. I think some of his most adventurous pictorial experiments were done in Normandy. And Normandy was the place where he became an artist, where he really refined his craft to the point where he was making masterpieces.

Everything that we know about Monet as an artist that we appreciate about Monet as an artist can be traced to Normandy. So, we decided that we would work with the Musee des Beaux-Arts in Rouen. We met in Paris, the curator from San Francisco and the director from of the Musee des Beaux-Arts in Rouen, and we were sitting in this tiny lobby of this tiny hotel in Paris, and we’re discussing the show and, “Oh, we should try to get this picture, and we should try to get that picture.” And the director of the museum in Rouen said, “Well, you know that Giverny is in Normandy?” And, “No, I didn’t know that.” And no one in our group knew that. And so we were all shocked, but it just immediately opened up a whole new avenue of more pictures that we could add. It changed the whole appearance of the show.

UNC-TV:  Why did you collaborate with the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and the Cleveland Museum of Art on this exhibition?

Steel: Always, when you can do an exhibition that’s a collaborative effort, the show benefits because different curators bring in different perspectives. And, also, we’re all friends, and so there was a very freewheeling exchange of ideas. And I think that kind of freewheeling exchange is always good for an exhibition; it makes it better.

UNC-TV: Tell us about the exhibition.

Steel:  One of the great things about doing Monet in Normandy is that Monet’s artistic activity in Normandy begins at the beginning and ends at the end of his life. So, the exhibition really presents a pretty comprehensive view of Monet as an artist.

So, we started out the show with one of the very earliest pictures he ever painted, this wonderful chapel painting at Honfleur. It’s a painting that shows Monet as a young artist. He’s still very much under the sway of older masters, hasn’t found his voice yet. And so, what he’s doing is he’s borrowing things. He’s out painting with a Dutch artist named Jondkind. He’s influenced by his first real teacher, Boudin. And so, this painting of the Chapel de Notre-Dame at Honfleur is a painting that shows what he is borrowing from each of these artists. But what it also shows are the seeds, the very early growth of Monet as Monet. There is this beautifully structured chapel on the right. It’s architecture is very careful. But then you move over, and there is this wonderful grove of trees at the left, which instead of painting every single leaf the way a respectable French artist at this time would have done, for Monet it’s about texture. It’s about mass. It’s about color. He is already starting to look at the world differently than the previous generation of artists.

UNC-TV: Can you tell us a little about Normandy?

David Steel: Well, Normandy was the first part of France that became a destination for tourists and for vacationers. Even as far back as the early 19th century, British tourists had come to Normandy because it’s just across the English Channel. But what the railroads did was to make transportation from Paris to Normandy, and really from all parts of France through Paris to Normandy, possible. It made it possible, for instance, to spend a weekend at the beach, to spend a week at the beach and not to spend four days getting there and back. So, all of a sudden, these sleepy little beach towns, these sleeping little fishing villages, became inundated with tourists.

UNC-TV: Why was Monet so taken with Normandy?

Steel: Well, I think the province as a whole has an almost inexhaustible repertoire of motifs that you can mine: beautiful beaches, dramatic cliffs, picturesque villages, amazing fields with poppies and all sorts of flowers, beautiful rivers, the Seine runs all the way across Normandy as a province from really—from one corner to the other. So that the variety of motifs that Monet was able to glean from Normandy; it was inexhaustible.

Monet had a tendency that when he found a spot that he liked to paint in, he mined it exhaustively. He was able to extract from a site this almost infinite variety. And I think it’s one of the great things of the exhibition points out, that you take a place like Etretat, and you can see the variety that Monet is able to achieve at different points in Etretat, or even when he focuses on a single motif, the Manneporte, what kind of variety he is able to glean from one position and one place.

A motif like the Manneporte, this beautiful limestone rock arch that has been sculpted over eons by wind and waves, and its a beautiful rock formation, Monet paints it from a distance. He paints it from up on top of the cliffs. He maybe paints it from a boat out in the channel. But I think most amazingly of all, he makes this very dangerous climb down the cliff and through this long tunnel and stands right on the beach, practically under the arch and paints it. That’s the most dramatic place. Other artists before him had painted the rock arch. It was one of the great monuments, natural monuments along the French coast. And I think, partially because of that, Monet was looking for a different view of it, something that no one else had done. So, he makes this long, dangerous trek, arduous. I mean, imagine, he’s got an easel. He’s got his paint box. He probably has a helper helping him carry three or four canvases. And it’s almost like a safari down to the beach. And he stands there, and he paints. The tricky part is the beach is very narrow there and the tides are very strong, so he has to be very careful. He has to time the proper light effects that he wants to get, the sun setting, the sun rising. He has to be very mindful of the tides rising. He doesn’t want to get stuck there or trapped there. And, in fact, one time he is painting the Manneporte, and he does get trapped. He says that—he writes his wife that a wave comes, knocks over his easel. His canvas goes into the sea. He gets thrown into the sea. He says that he has paint all over his sweater. He almost drowns. He makes it sound like he barely survived. But I think it shows that, you know, we think of, you know, transporting—we don’t think of how complicated it was for Monet to actually paint these for us. We just say, “Oh, Monet painted out of doors. He was in nature.” But it was much more difficult, when you think about the logistics of it, it was a difficult task that he set for himself.

UNC-TV: Please talk about A Seascape, Shipping By Moonlight.

Steel: When we think of Impressionist pictures, probably the last thing we think of is a night scene. And, in fact, by the time Monet painted this work, night scenes, which had been a staple of, say, 17th century painting, has all but faded from the artistic repertoire of European painting. So, here comes Monet, you know, in the 1860s, and, of all things, he decides he is going to paint a night scene. The amazing thing about this night scene is that it really is an impression. It offers Monet this wonderful opportunity to have the moon, moonlight flooding out from below this cloud. The way the moonlight not only creates the edges around these clouds, but the way it strikes the water. And he’s comparing this moonlight with this lonely, little light, this manmade light at the end of the jetty. And it’s this wonderful contrast between nocturnal moonlight, natural light, and this lonely, little beacon that presumably this is what sailors navigated by to come into the harbor there. When you look at this painting and you look at the way he treats the light on the water, you can see this is why the subject intrigued Monet. And when you see, 20 years later, when Monet is still painting the effects of light on water, you can see why this subject appealed to him right from the get go. Again, that makes the point, nobody is painting a scene like this at this time. I mean, Monet comes up with this subject, and the way he paints the subject is different than any artist would have painted it. So, it shows at a very early age, he is already seeing the world differently, and he is already painting the world differently.

UNC-TV: Please talk a little about the Garden At Sainte-Adresse.

David Steel: One of the interesting things about doing a show like this, you have to remember that museums don’t really like to lend their Monets. These are the most important pictures in their collections, certainly the most popular pictures in their collections. So, it’s very difficult to convince museums why should they lend the most popular picture in their collection. One of the best days I had in the whole time I worked on this show, the four or five years that I was working on this show, was the day we got the letter from the Metropolitan Museum of Art saying, “We’re going to lend The Great Garden at Sainte-Adresse. This is a painting that’s in every history of Impressionism. It was certainly the most important picture Monet painted as a young man. And I think, in many ways, it’s not only Monet’s first masterpiece, it’s probably the earliest masterpiece of Impressionism. And what it shows is the incredibly rapid maturation of Monet as an artist.

Here, in this painting, there were certain aspects of it that are still fairly conventional. You can see he is very careful about laying out the perspective, laying out the composition of this. But what is completely radical is the way he treats the flowers in the garden and the amazing light here. This is Monet. He is really now starting to come to terms with painting this beautiful, clear, white, coastal light, and the effect that that light has on everything around him, whether it’s the pennants snapping in the breeze, whether it’s the sea in the background, or I think even most effectively, the way those gladioli and nasturtiums in the garden are represented.

UNC-TV: What was Monet’s relationship like with Camille Doncieux?

David Steel: Well, I think Monet’s first serious relationship was with a woman, Camille Doncieux, who first served as his model in several of his paintings, eventually became his mistress, and then became the mother of his child or children. And in between the birth of his first son and the birth of his second son, Monet married her, made her his wife. It was a difficult time because Monet’s father was dead set against the relationship. And I think it must have been very difficult for Monet, poor as he was, dependent on his father for financial support. And his father kind of used this as an axe over his head to make Monet behave the way his father thought he should be. But, despite that, he was very loyal to Camille, very devoted to her. And as soon as he was able to sort of shake loose from his father, you know, married her, acknowledged his children as his own. Shortly after he paints The Garden at Sainte-Adresse, Camille gives birth. Monet rushes back to Paris and stands in at the christening of his son as, “This is my child,” doesn’t try to hide the fact that he is the father. He does the right thing. He was very devoted to her, and she stayed with him through thick and thin, and it’s the real tragedy of their relationship that she contracts a debilitating disease during her second pregnancy and was bedridden after the birth of their second child and dies a year later. And that just rips Monet apart. He is so depressed. And he paints this very poignant picture of Camille on her death bed that he refused to sell. He kept it with him in his possession until he died.

One poignant detail about their lives was, after Camille dies, Monet is forced to go to one of his patrons and ask this patron to get this necklace that he had given Camille out of hock in Paris, so that she could buried in it.

UNC-TV: Please talk a little about the “honeymoon” pictures.

David Steel: In June of 1870, Monet and Camille get married, and they decide to go to Trouville, this beautiful coastal resort town, very chic, for their honeymoon. I think Monet had two purposes in mind. One, he of course wanted to have a nice honeymoon with his bride, but I think his other motive was that he hoped to paint some tourist pictures there. He hoped to avail himself of the patronage of the fashionable tourists who would spend the summer at the beach in Trouville. There was a very chic, fashionable hotel called the Hotel de Roche Noir, the Black Rock Hotel, there, which the fashionable tourists from France, from all over Europe, from America, would come and stay. It was the place to be seen. And Monet paints this hotel, the façade of this hotel. He is standing at one end of this promenade, and he is painting this façade, and he actually shows the flags of the countries that the patrons of the hotel were from. So, in this picture, it’s wonderful. There is an American flag there to show that, “Oh, the Americans are staying here,” and there’s a British flag and the French tricolour there. So, he paints this picture. And he’s actually very hopeful that one of these tourists will come and buy the picture, and so his painting will be hanging in a very fashionable living room, and other tourists will then start patronizing him. And, in fact, that is exactly what happened. This picture ends up in a very prominent Parisian collection. And Monet goes on to paint five or six pictures that summer, which are almost unique in his work because they show tourists along the boardwalk. They show tourists promenading on this plank walkway, literally on the beach. They show fully dressed, and they are in hats and suits and long dresses on the beach because, of course, polite society didn’t go to the beach to get a tan. They went to the beach to take in the salt air and to be seen by other fashionable tourists.

Now, the interesting thing is, is while Monet’s patrons are staying at this very fashionable hotel, Monet and his wife and son are residing in a much less fashionable hotel located near the fish market in Trouville. So, even though they are pretending to be tourists, and they are vacationing and honeymooning at this very fashionable resort, they haven’t yet quite achieved the kind of financial success that would enable them to commingle with the people that he hopes are going to buy his pictures.

UNC-TV:  What can you tell us about the ships on the Seine pictures?

Steel:  By the early 1870s, Monet had had limited success with selling his pictures, but he had sold enough so that he was able to buy a small boat, which he converted into this kind of floating studio. So, he comes to Rouen to visit his brother Leon, who is a very successful chemist there. And he paints a series of works painted literally on the Seine from his floating boat that shows these ships coming into Rouen, coming into the harbor. This a radically new idea. Lots of artists has painted Rouen. Lots of artists had painted scenes from the banks of the river, but Monet, as far as I know, is the first artist to actually get out on the river and paint the river from the river. This allowed him to paint these kinds of views, very different kinds of views than other artists had painted. And, as we’ll see later on in the exhibition, this floating studio boat becomes a very important part of his life, and he uses it throughout his life when he is painting works on the Seine and the various tributaries of the Seine.

UNC-TV: What was Monet’s childhood like?

David Steel: Monet was raised in La Havre. His parents moved there when he was five years old, and so he knew the city very well. La Havre was a booming merchant town. It was one of the main ports of entry for goods from Britain, and it had a very exciting commercial life. And I think Monet must have been caught up in that and seen the sort of artistic aspects of that life. In fact, Monet had some of his earliest art lessons at this museum, the Musee des Beaux-Arts at La Havre. And one of the great paintings in the exhibition, a picture that was another great day in putting this show together, was when the National Gallery in London agreed to lend us this beautiful painting of the Muse de Bozart Musee des Beaux-Arts in La Havre where Monet had been a student. And it’s very different from the other views because Monet was literally out in the water. It looks like it was painted on the water. He may have been standing on a nearby dock. But it’s a straight-on view across the harbor, so you have this beautiful texture of the water. And then there is, I guess for lack of a better word, a flock of sailboats in front of this museum. And then you have the architecture of the museum itself. So, it’s a painting that has a great deal of variety of textures, of structure, within it. And Monet handles it brilliantly.

Its one of the paintings that—you can see it in reproduction, and you think, “Well, this is a good picture.” But when you see it in the flesh, it’s an astonishingly beautiful work. And, again, it reveals this incredible sophistication, this incredible growth that Monet is undergoing in the late ‘70s and the early ‘80s. He’s really making progress as an artist. He is becoming Monet.

UNC-TV:How did the death of his wife, Camille, affect Monet?

David Steel: We know that the death of his first wife, Camille, really affected Monet profoundly. It was a lingering illness that lasted over a year. And Monet’s letters at this time, his letters to his friends, to his colleagues, to his patrons, just show the depth of the pain and sorrow that he was undergoing. He didn’t paint very much during this time; the family was really poor. And I think Monet was affected by the fact that he didn’t really have the kind of money that he might have needed to make sure that she got the first rate medical care that she needed. And I think that may have inspired Monet later on to be much more money conscious than maybe he would have been otherwise because he could remember very poignantly when he was poor and how sad he felt at that time.

UNC-TV: Who was Ernest Hoschede?

David Steel: Well, one of Monet’s important patrons was this man named Ernest Hoschede, who had a very large family, had a wife. He had five or six children. And the Monets, Camille and Claude Monet, became very close with these people. And, in fact, their households kind of merged when Ernest suffered a sort of series of financial setbacks. While Camille ways dying, on the last year of her life, it was, in fact, Ernest’s wife, Alice, who really nursed her, who really took care of her.

After Camille dies, Monet and Alice’s relationship becomes much more closely interlocked. They become, I think, romantically linked. And, in fact, I mean, it’s a friendship—the relationship between Monet and Alice starts out as a friendship, and it develops into a relationship of mutual respect as Monet saw Alice taking care of his first wife. Alice becomes Monet’s best friend. He writes her every single day when he is away painting. She shares his joys and his sorrows, and Monet and Alice eventually become lovers while she is still married to Ernest. And this must have been very difficult because this was a pretty scandalous relationship. And there is no doubt that both Monet and Alice must have suffered because of it. And, in fact, shortly after Ernest dies, Monet marries Alice.

UNC-TV: Please talk about Monet’s career in the early 1880s.

David Steel: After Camille dies in 1879, Monet is unable to go to the shore. He doesn’t paint there for two years. And, in fact, he doesn’t paint very much at all. You can see that he goes into this sort of profound funk. But in 1881, Monet finally gets up the courage to go back to the shore to visit some of the places that he had seen while he was married to Camille. And it begins a decade of a very intimate relationship with the sea along the Normandy coast. From 1881 through most of the 1880s, Monet is painting at the sea almost every year. He is painting in all seasons. He goes there in the wintertime when there is no one there except the fishermen and crazy artists like Monet. He goes there in the summertime. He paints all up and down the Normandy coast. And really, I think, it’s during the ‘80s when he is painting along the coast that Monet finally achieves this kind of artistic greatness. It’s where he finally becomes his own artist. He paints like no other artist. And it’s the sea pictures that really gain him the kind of popularity and financial success that makes him the most important artist in France.

UNC-TV: Do you have a favorite painting?

David Steel: Well, I think one of my personal favorite paintings in the exhibition is this wonderful picture that depicts Low Tide at Varengeville where there are these magnificent cliffs. Monet is standing on the beach. It’s not a very nice day. It’s kind of cloudy and overcast. And Monet takes advantage of this, of this cloudy, overcast weather. It offers him these wonderful reflections in these tidal pools. So, you have these clumps of algae that are there. You have these patches of very limpid water, calm water that allows this beautiful gray light at the beach to be reflected in. And it allows Monet to paint with every color in his paint box. When you look at the sand on the left side of this picture, you think, “Oh, that’s sand.” And then you get up close, and you see that there are streaks of pink and purple and cream. It’s an astonishing effect that Monet achieves. This is, I think, one of his most subtly painted works in the exhibition. It’s also a painting that, like so many paintings in this exhibitions, if you look at it from two feet away, and you actually can see every single brush stroke, and you just marvel at his command over his brush. And then you step back to six feet, and all of a sudden all of these individual brush strokes come together and unify into this amazing effect. The sand, these multiple brush strokes, when you step back, it’s wet sand; it’s perfect, you know, the light shimmering on the sand. Another great thing about this picture is this tension between the surface of these tidal pools and these patches of algae that sort of punctuate it, which, to me, seem to foreshadow these beautiful water lily paintings of 20 and 30 years later. And when I look at this painting, I wonder, “Is that the first glimmer that Monet has of what becomes a whole series of paintings with the water lilies?”

UNC-TV:What about the Church At Varengeville?

David Steel: Well, Monet spends a fair amount of time in the summer of ’82 at Varengeville, and he paints the tidal flats in this beautiful painting from Madrid. But he also climbs up on top of the cliffs and paints the plateau above the sea, looking out across this beautiful sweep of landscape, this beautiful little church of Varengeville in the background. But in between Monet and the church is this wonderful patch of very coarse brush, underbrush. And it’s another one of these paintings that if you look at it up close, and you see how many different colors, how many different kinds of brushstrokes go into painting this brush—and then you step back from it, and all of the sudden, all of these brushstrokes come together. And the variety of color turns into texture, and all of the sudden it’s, “Boy, that looks just like underbrush.” And no other artist could ever paint it like that. But Monet trusted his eye, trusted his instincts, and he knew what would happen when the viewer standing before this picture—that that viewer would mix these colors, and it would all come together. And it would all become that coarse texture, that coarse underbrush. And then off to the right in the distance, this calm, tranquil sea and sky.  So, these pictures are beautifully composed. They are beautiful juxtapositions of color and light and texture. And I think, really it’s these early 1880s paintings where Monet becomes the finest artist of his generation.

UNC-TV:  What about the Custom House paintings?

David Steel:  Well, one of Monet’s favorite motifs along the Normandy coast was this solitary customs house that was constructed during Napoleon’s blockade of the English Channel to prevent British ships from invading France or from offloading their cargo. And they were put in strategic places, but these houses seem very lonely. They are isolated out on the ends of the cliff, the very edge of the cliff. And Monet is captivated by this customs house, and he paints it from a variety of angles, perspectives, different times of day, different weather conditions. And he paints a whole series of these. He paints 17 of them in 1882, and you think, “This is a customs house. This is one little building. How can an artist paint 17 views of it and make each of them a great painting?” But Monet, somehow he recognizes the potential for this motif. He uses it as a manmade presence in an otherwise pristine natural landscape, and I think when he does this, the customs house becomes more than just a building. It actually becomes this sort of stand-in for a human presence, maybe even for Monet’s presence. You have the feeling that this house is actually standing watch, standing on the coast and looking out over the sea, much in the same way that Monet did. It’s clear that he felt a very tight bond with this, and it’s a bond that goes, I think, beyond the relationship of artist and motif. I think you sense when you look at these pictures that there is an emotional connection between Monet and this house.

So, Monet paints 17 views of this customs house in 1882. Fourteen years later, he comes back to the Normandy coast for the last time, and what does he paint? He goes back and paints this customs house again. He paints 14 pictures in 1896 and 1897 of the same place. And you would have thought, “My gosh, hasn’t he exhausted this motif yet?” But these pictures in the late ‘90s are very different in feel. There is almost the sense of nostalgia. The brushwork is very much softer. There are no more of these vigorous contrasts that we see in the early pictures. There is an almost dream-like quality. The colors are very soft pastel. And it sort of, to me, it’s Monet, the older Monet kind of nostalgically going back to when he was a young, vigorous man of 42. But he’s not 42. Inside, he is a very different person. It’s not that the customs house has changed. It’s not that the cliffs have changed. It’s Monet has changed, and that’s why these pictures look so different.

In 1893, his kids are getting old enough to go to school, and so he decides that where he was living didn’t have the kind of schools that he wanted. So, he moves his family to this little town called Poissy, doesn’t like Poissy. He is living with Alice in sin. The folks at Poissy really disapprove of that lifestyle. So, after a year, Monet starts looking again for a place to move.

Now, he had been painting along the Seine in this region in southeastern Normandy. So, he knew the river pretty well, and he comes across this little farm village called Giverny. And in there is this beautiful house. It’s the biggest house in the town. By the 1890s, Monet has some money. He is being patronized. And so, he decides he is going to move this large brood that he has, because he has two children of his own. He has his mistress, Alice, who has six children. So, it’s this ménage. And you can only imagine with the servants, there’s probably 10 or 12 people that Monet is moving from one place to another. So, they settle in this beautiful, pink farmhouse called “Le Pressior,” which means “the cider press.” And it’s a farmhouse. It’s located on two-and-a-half acres. And there are several out buildings. And I think for Monet, this is paradise for Monet. He sees the potential. It’s not only, that house is big enough to fit his brood in comfortably, he can entertain. He is a very sociable fellow. But he sees the out buildings that can be converted into studio space. And, I think most importantly of all, it has beautiful garden space.

                                        So, Monet finally settles down. And I think having that kind of settled feeling. I mean, we all know what it’s like. We’ve all gone through periods in our life where we are moving, moving, moving. And then just how good it feels to finally have a place that you can finally call home. So, they settle in. They’re renting the place at first. Four years later, Monet gets enough money together to actually buy this beautiful pink house. And he settles in there. He begins to work on the gardens. He creates this almost paradise, because not only is the town picturesque, but the surrounding countryside is beautiful. There are mountains. There is the Seine very nearby. Monet’s house is maybe 200 yards from the Seine. So, there are plenty of motifs for him to depict. And I think, also, you know, he has painted the Normandy coast. So, he knows that very well. But I think Giverny finally gives him the opportunity to paint the interior of Normandy, to concentrate on this rich, fertile, agrarian aspect of the province. And it really changes his subject matter. It changes his art.

                                        Being now a respected townsperson, having roots in a community, Monet, one of the first things he does is he goes out and paints the countryside. He paints it in spring. He paints these beautiful poppies that are blooming, fields of poppies near his house. He goes out in the harshness of winter, in a snowstorm practically, to paint this really wonderful, lavender-tinted picture of the out buildings near his house—in probably the middle of a snowstorm. He is painting it in the autumn. He goes out and paints the grain stacks, the haystacks, very near his house, in autumn. And I think he’s just—you can tell these pictures show, I think, Monet is in love with Giverny.

UNC-TV: What did Monet paint in Etretat?

David Steel: Well, one of Monet’s favorite spots on the Normandy coast was this little fishing village of Etretat. Etretat is a beautiful place. It’s very picturesque. But what sets it apart from all the other picturesque fishing villages on the Normandy coast is a series of three majestic limestone promontories that go right out into the sea. And it became Monet’s favorite place. He paints probably 70 paintings of Etretat between 1883 and 1886. He returns there again and again and again. He’s there in February and March, painting it under the most stressful climate conditions. It’s raining. I mean, there are few places on earth that seem colder and wetter than the Normandy coast in the wintertime. Nobody paints stormy weather. Nobody stands out in the rain in the 19th century and paints wet weather. You know, why would an artist do this? Well, Monet did it. Monet saw that even this gloomy weather could be mined pictorially. So, he paints all these different scenes. He paints even when it’s raining. You know, he’s trying to get pictures of the fishing fleet going out, and it rains and it rains and it rains. And he is so frustrated. So, what does he do? He goes to a window in his hotel, sets up his easel, and he paints the fishing boats up on the beach at Etretat. They’re flanked by these caloges, these thatched huts which are actually made out of abandoned boats which can no longer be used. And he achieves this amazing kind of pictorial effect. When you look at all the variety of his brushwork, these amazing textures and colors, color combinations that could only exist in Monet’s imagination—and he paints them. And he gets something very special out of it. And these pictures of the boats on the beach, just like the stormy pictures, just like this beautiful sunset picture in our museum, no one else is painting like that.

UNC-TV: Please talk about his series paintings.

David Steel: It’s in Normandy where he actually starts to paint groups of works in series, works that focus on a single motif. He paints this single customs house cabin in two series in the early 1880s and in the late 1890s, 31 times, focusing on a single building: a single cabin, a tiny cabin perched on the cliffs. In the 1890s, Monet begins to explore the whole idea of the series paintings in a series of series, if you will. In 1891, he begins to go out his back door at Giverny and paint the grain stacks that he sees. In Normandy, as you were gathering up the hay in the autumn, what you did was you made little buildings, literally, out of hay. And these buildings with a thatched roof kept the grain dry over the wintertime, so it was preserved. And they are almost like little houses, structures. And Monet sees these, and he says later on that he just initially had planned to paint one or two. But clearly what happened was, is I think he started thinking of the series aspect of this right from the get go.

He goes out either at dawn or at dusk, and he brings with him six or seven canvases, and he paints the fleeting effects of light. He’ll work on one canvas for, say, seven or eight or nine minutes, and then, as the light changes, he’ll pick up the canvas that shows a little later progression. Six or seven minutes, picks up another one and another one. And he paints these motifs, these grainstacks, in wintertime because they are up all winter, and in the autumn. So, you have these very different effects. The light is very different in the snow. The light is very different at dawn. The light is very different at sunset in the autumn as opposed to sunset in winter. And he’s frustrated because he writes at this time that it’s almost impossible for him to capture these effects for more than two or three minutes because the sun sets so quickly in the autumn and in the winter. So, you can just imagine him frantically working on five or six of these canvases at once, trying to capture that momentary effect each day over the course of six or seven days or even six or seven months.

And I think what really is the key to his series paintings is he realizes that he has so much to say about light and color and atmosphere that he can’t say it in one painting, that it’s impossible for him to capture what he calls the envelope, this conjoining of light, atmosphere and humidity in the air and all the special things that make one moment different from another when you are standing outside. So, he progresses. He paints a series of grainstacks, about 30 grainstacks. And this is a radical concept. No one has ever done this. And so he paints these grainstacks, and then he shows 15 of them the following year at a gallery in Paris. And he doesn’t really know how it’s going to go, but the public goes crazy over it. He gets beautiful reviews written. The critics love it. The public love it. He sells these pictures, and all of a sudden, he realizes that it’s almost like his public has finally caught up with his vision.

So, the next year he goes out and paints a series of poplars that are growing along the banks of one of the tributaries of the Seine near his house. And this is very difficult because these poplars that he’s painting, after he’s about midway through the series, he finds out that they finally matured, and it’s time to cut them down. And so, Monet has to make a deal with the woodcutter. “Look, I’ll buy these from you, or I’ll rent them for the next three or four months while I finish painting my series, and then you can cut them down.” And that’s exactly what happens.

Then he moves on, a few years later, he paints a series of works that capture the morning light on this tributary of the Seine called the Epte River. He’s in his floating boat studio, and every morning he leaves home about 3:00 in the morning, and he makes this journey down to his boat. And he goes out on the river, and he has with him 15 or 16 canvases. And he paints these momentary effects. He does the same thing that he did with the haystacks. He’ll paint for five or six minutes on one canvas, and then he’ll put it back in the rack. And he’ll pull out the next one, and he’ll paint the next five or six minutes—or the next five or six moments as the sun rises slowly. And the mist gradually lifts, and the colors change, and the pallet gets brighter and brighter. And he does a beautiful series of about 27 paintings of these Mornings on the Seine, one of which—I mean, one of the most beautiful of which is in the North Carolina Museum of Art. And it was this painting that when I found out that Giverny was in Normandy, that I became tremendously excited because I thought, “Wow, this will give us a chance to show our beautiful Morning on the Seine.” And we’re really fortunate in that we have two other pictures that show this same little stretch of water on the Epte, very different pictures that show a variety of effectS that Monet was able to gather by just concentrating on this single motif.

UNC-TV: Monet was a very dedicated painter, wasn’t he?

David Steel: I think one of the things that the exhibition shows is Monet’s discipline and commitment to his art. I mean, Monet is painting up until the year he dies, and he dies at the age of 86. I mean, imagine a career that you have to pursue with passion and discipline and integrity for 70 some-odd years of your life. That’s a pretty passionate commitment.

UNC-TV: How important was Monet’s garden?

David Steel: His Normandy almost becomes an internal Normandy. It becomes focused on his own gardens and this beautiful lily pond that he creates. We know that for the last 30 years of his life, Monet is obsessed with his garden. He hires six or seven gardeners. He corresponds with horticulturalists all over the world. “What about this kind of rose? What about this kind of water lily?” And he is in communication with them. And it becomes, I think, an all consuming passion, which he marries with his other passion, which is his art. What’s interesting about these pictures, especially the later ones, is there is no way that you can orient yourself in these pictures. He doesn’t give you a hint as to where is the land, where is the sky. All you are doing is looking down into this pond, and it’s mesmerizing. It’s disorienting to a point, but it forces you almost to become part of the composition. It’s almost like you’re in the midst of this pond. You’ve almost become part of the pond. And I think, for Monet, I think really it’s become such a personal experience that—that’s what it is. He can’t separate himself from his creation.

I think you can say that Monet spent the first 50 years of his life painting nature, painting God’s creation. But he spent the last 35 years of his life playing god, playing creator. He creates this perfect oasis, this perfect garden of paradise, in the gardens around his house in Giverny. And it’s this perfect connection between the art of gardening, if you will, the art of nature, being a part of nature, creating nature, and then painting nature. He has also matured as a human being. I think he is so in touch with his art, with his own emotions. He’s older. He’s wiser. He’s more mature. He doesn’t have to worry about money. He is the richest artist in France. He doesn’t have to worry about his reputation. His reputation as France’s greatest living artist is absolutely secure. People are flocking from all over the world to come buy his pictures, to come talk to the great man, to come walk in his garden. His reputation is secure. He is the grand old man of French painting. And I think, especially at the end of his life, it gives him the kind of freedom to paint what he wants how he wants. More than any of his other works, I think these late paintings give you a sense of what Monet feels when he paints.

UNC-TV:  Why should people visit this exhibition?

David Steel: I think one of the strengths of the whole show—as you walk through the exhibition, you have a sense that these are paintings that are felt as much as they are painted, that Monet has this connection with his home province, with Normandy, that underpins that, enhances each of these pictures. There is an amazing personal quality to these pictures, and I think that’s really maybe the strongest point of choosing Monet and Normandy as a theme for an exhibition. You sense the affection that Monet has for what he is painting, maybe even an obsession for what Monet is painting.

I thought I knew Monet. I had this idea about what it was like to be an Impressionist artist, and that Monet would just go out, put up his easel, paint something. Go out the next day, put up his easel, paint something else. What I’ve come to see in working on this exhibition is that he is a consummate perfectionist, that he worked very hard to perfect his craft. I think he had an instinctive genius. He saw the world differently from other people, and he was able to communicate that different vision through his art. And I think that’s the mark of a genius. You can’t teach that. But what Monet worked on very carefully was his brushwork, his command of the brush. He taught himself to compose. He is one of the greatest composers in modern art, I think.

I think that’s the great thing about Monet is he makes it look easy, but what we really know is that it wasn’t easy. He spent many, many years cultivating the image that he only painted out of doors. Somebody asked him, “Where is your studio?” And Monet points to the great outdoors, and he says, “This is my studio.” Well, we know differently. He may have started these works outside, and that may be where he captured those beautiful, momentary effects of light and atmosphere. But what we also know is that almost every one of his paintings he took back to the studio when he was done outside and worked on them in the studio, adding a touch here, maybe tightening up a composition there. So, that these are products of hard work. So, that these pictures, even though they are the product of hard work, careful study, they still retain a kind of freshness to them, a liveliness to them, a naturalness to them, that makes us feel like we are standing outside, enjoying this kind of view that Monet is painting.

UNC-TV: Why is Monet still so popular today?

David Steel: We think we know Monet. I think he is popular because his paintings are beautiful. His colors are magical. Even critics reviewing his shows talk about Monet’s magic, and I think we can sort of see that when we look at his art. But I think that the one thing that’s the negative side of Monet being so popular and so familiar to us, is I don’t think we look at Monet anymore. It’s almost that he’s become illustration, decoration. And I think one of the great things about this exhibition is it gives North Carolinians, people from the region, the opportunity to go see 50 great Monets in the flesh. And looking at a Monet painting face-to-face is a very, very different thing than looking at a Monet poster or looking at a reproduction of Monet. You can really see what a great artist he is. You can see the depth, the sophistication, the passion. The important thing to remember is, he’s a great artist. And I don’t think you can see that unless you go and experience these works in the flesh.

I think if I had one thing to say to people, why they should come to see this exhibition, is you think you know Monet, you don’t know Monet. You have to come and see Monet for yourself. It’s a whole new experience. I think that like any great artist, any great work of art, there is no comparison to seeing the real thing face-to-face. And I think maybe with Monet, it’s an even more extraordinary experience because we think we know what we’re going to see, and we’re pleasantly shocked, astonished. Even a jaded art historian like me, a jaded curator. I’ve looked at thousands of paintings in my life. I’ve looked at hundreds of books on Monet, but when I stand in front of these paintings, my breath is taken away. There is nothing like it. I think the other thing I would say is, spend time with these pictures. Look at them up close. Back up and look at them from six feet away. I know for me, I see different things in these pictures every time I look at them, and I think you will too. I think when you come to see these paintings, there’s something new to see.

I think Monet and Normandy is a very special occasion for our public because most of them have never seen 50 Monets in one place, 50 great Monets in one place. Maybe we’ve seen too many reproductions of Monet. Maybe our eyes have grown accustomed to Monet, and we think we know Monet. This exhibition will, I think, show you that maybe you don’t know Monet. And when you come and see these pictures, and you get to know Monet, you’re going to want to know him more and more.

I hope when visitors come to see this show that they’re going to take time and spend time with these pictures. I think that what they may take away from this exhibition is these are a lot more than pretty pictures. That may attract us initially to them, that may establish an initial link between us and these paintings. But I think if they spend time with these pictures, they’re going to realize that they are more than just pretty pictures, that Monet had a different way of seeing things, and that he had the ability to communicate that different way of seeing things. And I hope, ultimately, that we’ll come away from this show ourselves having a different way of seeing things.  

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