Despite not really caring about going himself, my loving husband drove us all the way to Fort Worth during rush hour one Friday evening so I could see it before it moved on.
It was great to be able to see my favorites again. It was also nice to not feel pressure to look at everything else or listen to the audio commentary headphones. I like to learn the history but it does distract a little from the experience of just enjoying the paintings. We also, of course, looked at the paintings at the end that we missed when we had to leave early the other time.
There were so many people there that we had to keep moving to not hold others up. So I kept looping around in the sections where I had especial favorites.
My favorite paintings were from the period of 1914-17. The placard said that between 1911 when his wife Alice died and the death of his son Jean in 1914 he seldom painted.
Then in the spring of 1914, he embarked on a new series of water-lily paintings. "These works represented a bold departure, marked by gestural brushwork and increasingly larger formats. They are the work of an artist filled with joyful energy, rapidly improvising the image on the canvas as a record of his sensations before the motif."
He wrote to a friend, "[I am] in a high fever of working, and so absorbed, so tired at day's end, I don't have the strength to write... I know it's bad, but work above all. I am overjoyed to be back at it."
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| This was the first in the series from that time period. It is also my favorite. |
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| close up of the bottom half. |
He seems to have thrown off the weight of grief and depression. He won't let it hold him back any longer. I don't know if he was a perfectionist. But he certainly seems to be less fussed about the classic ideal of the perfectly realistic painting and is embracing an expressionist style.
I too want to throw off the weight of perfectionism that holds me back.
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| Another from that time period |
The ones we saw from the end of his life were different again. His vision was getting very bad. Although I didn't like some of them as well, especially the ones that lacked definition, I found it moving that he kept painting despite his challenges.
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| This is one I did like despite it not being very realistic. It is one of the four of his house and garden that a placard said were some of his last and "most daring" paintings. |
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| People watching was fun too. From the guy who sat on a little stool and tried his hand at painting a copy of one of Monet's water lily paintings to the many who took selfies with their friends and family, it was a real interactive experience. I think Monet would have been pleased. |
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| I had to get in on the fun too :-) |
