By the age of 14, Monet had made a name for himself with his charcoal caricatures of various Le Havre locals. The pieces, which he sold for 10-20 francs each. It was such a good living he refused to meet the artist Eugène Boudin who wanted to instruct him in the use of oils to paint landscapes, thankfully for us he eventually conceded and studied under his mentor. Monet later acknowledged: “If I have become a painter, it is entirely due to Eugène Boudin.”
In 1861, at the age of twenty, Monet was drafted into the First Regiment of African Light Cavalry. His father, despite having the means, declined to purchase the 2,500 franc exemption from conscription when Monet refused to give up painting. Although his time as a conscript in Algiers would influence his work “the impressions of light and colour that I received there…contained the germ of my future researches.”
Shortly after the birth of his first son, Monet and his family were living in poverty; his father did not approve of his relationship and career and had cut him off financially. Struggling to support his family and frustrated by the French art establishment, Monet attempted suicide by jumping off of a bridge into the Seine River. Monet would continue to struggle with bouts of depression throughout his life.
In 1862, Monet entered the studio of the Swiss painter Charles Gleyre. Alongside like-minded artists Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Frédéric Bazille and Alfred Sisley, he began to refine his visual language and technique. In 1874, Monet and others whose works were often rejected at the conservative Salon de Paris (including Renoir, Manet, Degas, Cézanne and Camille Pissarro) formed the Anonymous Society of Painters, Sculptors, and Engravers and organized an independent exhibition. It would later become known as The First Impressionist Exhibition.
Displayed at the 1874 exhibition, the painting depicts a hazy scene at the port of Le Havre. The critic Louis Leroy disparagingly referred to the painting as “Impressionistic”, commenting that “Wallpaper in its embryonic state is more laboured than this seascape!” The term, however, was soon enthusiastically embraced by the budding movement.
In 1908, a show of his work in Paris had to be postponed after he took a knife to at least 15 of his water lily canvases. This was not his first bout of destruction, nor would it be his last; after his cataract surgery, he disposed of or reworked many of the paintings that were created at the height of his vision loss. His friend and former French Prime Minister Georges Clémenceau told a journalist in 1927, “Monet would attack his canvases when he was angry. And his anger was born of a dissatisfaction with his work…Monet destroyed canvases in his quest for perfection.”
The two met in 1865 and were married in 1870. Doncieux, who also modelled for Renoir and Manet, is featured in numerous works including the 1866 painting Camille (The Woman in the Green Dress), and Women in the Garden (1866-67), for which she posed for all four figures. Shortly after the birth of their second child, Camille tragically died at the age of 32, probably from pelvic cancer. A grieving Monet painted her for the last time in Camille Monet on her deathbed (1879). The art critic John Berger described the painting as “a terrible blizzard of loss…there can be very few death-bed paintings which have been so intensely felt or subjectively expressive.”
Woman with a Parasol - Madame Monet and Her Son by Claude Monet features his first wife Camille Monet. Museum quality prints are available here.
Alice and her then-husband, Ernest Hoschedé, impoverished by debt, moved in with the Monets in 1878. Soon after Camille’s death, rumours began to swirl about Monet’s relationship with Hoschedé. They were eventually married in 1892 after the death of Hoschedé’s estranged husband. Alice was reportedly so jealous of Camille that she demanded that Monet destroy all photos, letters, and mementos of her. Only one photograph is known to have survived, an 1871 portrait that was kept in a private collection.
Monet produced numerous series examining the effects of the time of day, seasons, and weather conditions. These include the Haystacks series of 1890-91, the famous Rouen Cathedral paintings of 1892-94, and the over 250 Water Lilies that Monet painted in the last decades of his life. His series paintings diverge from his earlier and more spontaneous work in their careful and deliberate creation. Pop Art and Minimalism are both influenced by Monet’s pioneering interest in the serial display of objects.
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Here are 6 facts you may not have known about him:
One might assume that all the glitz on the surface of Klimt’s paintings would translate to an equally luxurious personal life, mixing it up with Vienna’s high society and reaping the benefits of his celebrity status.
Nothing could be farther from the truth. Klimt was a bit of a homebody and spent his days working from home on his art in his signature long, flowing caftan, sandals and (famously) no underwear. His studio was full of cats both owned and strays, he even used cat urine to fix some of his works (yet they still sell today for $135,000,000!). Klimt stated that:
“True relaxation, which would do me the world of good, does not exist for me.”
Perhaps the stresses of life were too much for him so he chose to remain indoors.
Klimt showed artistic promise and went to art school on a scholarship. After graduating Gustav Klimt and his brother Ernst agreed to focus their work on the murals and styles which were popular among Vienna’s upper class and aristocracy at that time so the brothers could support their family. They had to set aside any personal artistic inclinations to ensure work and would even be awarded a Golden Order or Merit from emperor Franz Josef for his contributions to murals. However events would unfold which changed the trajectory of his work and he would be received with ire rather than praise.
A lifelong bachelor, Klimt had countless affairs during his lifetime, frequently with his models, and fathered 14 children along the way and was rumoured to sleep with every model he painted (was this why he wore no underwear?).
In Klimt's case his art certainly imitated life. His compositions were often highly erotic, featuring sexual subject matter and females positioned in sensual poses that were radical for his day.
Despite numerous affairs with his models, he claimed the love of his life was his sister-in-law’s youngest sister, fashion designer Emilie Flöge. Flöge is the supposed muse of Klimt’s masterpiece, The Kiss, perhaps he is the male figure in the painting?
In 1900, Philosophy, one of the three murals Klimt was developing for the University of Vienna, was exhibited for the first time. Featuring various nude human forms and rather unsettling and dark symbolic imagery, the work caused a scandal among the university faculty. When the other two pieces, Medicine and Jurisprudence, were exhibited in subsequent exhibitions, they were met with an indignant response that ultimately resulted in them not being installed at the school, due to their ambiguous and pornographic nature. When several years later they were still not exhibited anywhere, an incensed Klimt withdrew from the commission and returned the fee in exchange for his paintings. Despite its rejection in Vienna, his Medicine was exhibited at the Exposition Universelle in Paris where it received the Grand Prix.
The Kiss (Detail) - Gustav Klimt. Currently available as a museum quality print here.
Despite his awkward relationship with the Austrian government, it was actually the National Belvedere Museum Of Vienna who purchased Klimt's piece in 1908. They paid 25,000 crowns for it (around $250,000 today), which, at the time, was the highest price of a painting to have been sold in Vienna. The museum put it on display despite it lacking finishing touches and it hasn't moved since its purchase. It serves as a hallmark of artistic modernity in Vienna, so its exact worth today isn't officially known. But given that “Portrait Of Adele Bloch-Bauer I” (a close second from Klimt's Golden Phase) sold for over $140 million back in 2006, we can bet that “The Kiss” is worth more and that figure is only increasing by the year.
The act of committing words to paper caused a great anxiety within Klimt. He even stated “Even when I have to write a simple letter I'm scared stiff, as if faced with looming seasickness. ”
Peculiarly for an artist, Klimt never once painted a self portrait. He must have been harassed about this because he eventually wrote an entire essay on the subject titled Commentary on a non-existent self-portrait. In it, he writes,
“I have never painted a self-portrait. I am less interested in myself as a subject for a painting than I am in other people, above all women. … There is nothing special about me. I am a painter who paints day after day from morning to night…Whoever wants to know something about me… ought to look carefully at my pictures.”
If Klimt preferred to allow his paintings to speak for him, then the message that The Kiss gave was extremely evocative - a man of intense passion, full of joy, in this moment devoted entirely to his love. It is no coincidence that Klimt's work is often linked to that of his Viennese compatriot, and near-contemporary, Sigmund Freud. When Klimt died in 1918, at the premature age of 55, several unfinished works of a strikingly sexual nature were found in his studio, as if revealing the erotic undercurrent latent beneath much of his earlier work.
What do you think Klimt’s pictures say about him?
Tannenwald 1 - Gustav Klimt - Mug. Currently available here.
]]>Despite only starting to paint at the age of 27 he still managed to paint 900 paintings before he committed suicide a decade later.
Van Gogh was never famous as a painter in his lifetime and constantly struggled with poverty. He sold only one painting during his lifetime. One hundred years after his death his Portrait of Dr Gachet would become the most expensive painting to ever be sold. It would hold that title for 16 years.
Portrait of Dr Gachet
Many people who owned his work initially thought it to be worthless. His own mother is said to have disposed of full crates of his paintings.
He was neither vain nor egocentric, it was due to necessity rather than arrogance. He struggled to afford models and had few friends, the few friends who had could not always endure him.
Van Gogh was troubled by mental illness most of his life. Evidence suggests that he had manic depression and suffered from psychotic episodes and delusions. His brother Theo felt there were two people within Vincent: ‘one marvellously gifted, refined and gentle, and the other selfish and unfeeling’. His physical health was neglected, His diet was said to consist of tobacco, coffee, alcohol and bread.
Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear. Available to purchase here.
Supposedly van Gogh and his very close friend, Paul Gauguin, were having a quarrel. The argument got more and more heated until van Gogh threatened his friend with a razor. But instead of actually harming Gauguin, van Gogh sliced off part of his own ear – wrapping it in a cloth and later giving it to a prostitute.
Some historians, however, think Gaugin was to blame. This story goes that Gaugin, an excellent fencer, cut van Gogh’s ear with his sword during a fight, and the two artists agreed to hush up the truth to escape the police.
Scared by his behaviour and following the ear incident, the Arles locals named him “le fou roux” (The Redheaded Madman) and rallied together to collect signatures for a petition against him (the Arles Petition). This caused van Gogh to leave Arles and check himself into the mental Asylum at Saint-Remy.
Starry Night. Museum quality prints are available to purchase here.
Starry Night is a composition of 4 different sun rises which he could see through his asylum window, he understandably left out the rooms bars from the work.
On July 27, 1890, van Gogh shot himself in the chest while painting. He was able to stagger to his dwelling in Auvers. Doctors tended to him, but the bullet could not be removed because there was no surgeon available. He died on July 29, 1890 from an infection in the wound.
His brother Theo said of his death “In the last letter which he wrote me and which dates from some four days before his death, it says, ‘I try to do as well as certain painters whom I have greatly loved and admired.’ People should realize that he was a great artist, something which often coincides with being a great human being. In the course of time this will surely be acknowledged, and many will regret his early death.”. Theo was certainly correct.