{"id":12146,"global_id":"portlandartmuseum.org?id=12146","global_id_lineage":["portlandartmuseum.org?id=12146"],"author":"15","status":"publish","date":"2024-11-07 09:22:11","date_utc":"2024-11-07 17:22:11","modified":"2025-08-11 10:05:38","modified_utc":"2025-08-11 17:05:38","url":"https:\/\/portlandartmuseum.org\/event\/monets-floating-worlds-at-giverny\/","rest_url":"https:\/\/portlandartmuseum.org\/wp-json\/tribe\/events\/v1\/events\/12146","title":"Monet\u2019s Floating Worlds at Giverny: Portland\u2019s Waterlilies Resurfaces","description":"

Overview<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The monumental canvas Waterlilies <\/em>by Claude Monet is perhaps the most treasured painting in the Portland Art Museum\u2019s collection. Now, after over 65 years, it finally looks much as the artist intended\u2014without varnish. The detailed process of conservation resulted in new color harmonies and brightness. To celebrate the restoration of the painting and the campus transformation project, this beloved icon is presented in its historical context. Monet and his fellow Impressionists were obsessed with Japanese \u201cfloating world\u201d prints that had only been available in Europe and the United States for a few decades, yet transformed the way artists looked at the world. They introduced new concepts of beauty and new ways of seeing the world that decentered the European tradition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Print
Charles-Louis Houdard (French, 1874-1931), Grenouilles (Frogs)<\/strong>, from L\u2019Estampe originale (The Original Print), Album VIII, 1894, color aquatint on simili-japon paper, plate: 10 3\/8 in x 15 11\/16 in; sheet: 14 5\/8 in x 18 1\/2 in, Museum Purchase: Print Acquisition Fund, public domain, 2015.13.1<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Monet\u2019s startlingly disorienting composition is without a horizon line or depth. It combines floating leaves, blossoms, and the reflections of hanging willow branches, with the suggestion of raindrops, resulting in a mesmerizingly contemplative image of nature. Yet the nature in Portland Art Museum\u2019s Waterlilies<\/em> painting is artificial\u2014a pond constructed by Monet, stocked with waterlily specimens imported from all over the world, and tended by eight gardeners. Monet created over 250 paintings of his waterlily pond in his final years, an astonishing project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
Bror Julius Olsson Nordfeldt (American, born Sweden, 1878-1955), Anglers<\/strong>, 1906, color woodcut on beige, thin, slightly textured Japan laid paper, image: 8 3\/4 in x 12 3\/4 in; sheet: 8 3\/4 in x 12 3\/4 in, Gift of Heirs of Charles Francis Adams Collection: Peter F. Adams, Mrs. Sandra Adams Beebe, and Charles Anthony Adams, \u00a9 unknown, research required, 89.20.98<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Monet decorated his expansive house in Giverny, France, with a selection of the hundreds of important woodblock Japanese prints he had collected by masters such as Toyokuni, Hiroshige, and Utamaro. Visitors experience a recreation of Monet\u2019s collection with prints from the Museum’s Asian Art collection in a section called Monet\u2019s Japanese Prints; followed by a section on the Impressionist and European response to Japanese artists, with works by Henri Rivi\u00e8re, \u00c9douard Vuillard, Jules Ch\u00e9ret, and others. Lastly, the newly conserved painting is presented alongside the story of the research and restoration project. Waterlilies <\/em>is joined by contemporary photographs of Giverny and Portland\u2019s Japanese gardens by Susan Seubert and Stu Levy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Co-organized for the Portland Art Museum by Charlotte Ameringer, Chief Conservator, Mary Weaver Chapin, Ph.D., Curator of Prints and Drawings, Lloyd DeWitt, Ph.D., The Richard and Janet Geary Curator of European & American Art Pre-1930, and Jeannie Kenmotsu, Ph.D., The Arlene and Harold Schnitzer Curator of Asian Art.<\/em><\/em><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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