Monet's CAMILLE IN A GREEN DRESS now at Met Museum

There's a current exhibition about Impressionism, Fashion, and Modernity at the Metropolitan Museum which features Monet's ORIGINAL PAINTING OF CAMILLE IN HER GREEN DRESS. I have never seen it in person as it is from Bremen. So do go see it if you can. The exhibition is open until May 27th, 2013.
http://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/listings/2013/impressionism-fashion-modernity/introduction

Thanks so much for all the wonderful e-mails about my novel CLAUDE and CAMILLE: A NOVEL OF MONET

Please do browse the seventy posts in this blog!

Please do browse some of the seventy lovingly researched mini-posts in this blog, each about different tiny parts of the lives of the impressionists including Renoir painting Richard Wagner, Berthe Morisot's last letter to her daughter, did Monet's second wife destroy his first wife's (Camille's) letters and diaries, the secret life of Monet's best friend Frederic Bazille, an auction of Renoir's personal papers including his wedding license. Your blog author has taken a break to finish her new novel but yes....there may be another novel about an impressionist in my future as well!

Claude Monet in his early twenties

It is now almost three years since CLAUDE & CAMILLE: A NOVEL OF MONET was first published. In translation, it has traveled to Italy, Germany, Poland, Brazil, China and onward! Thank you to the tens of thousands of people who have read it! And to everyone who has loved this blog!

update on this site and my novel about Monet

Apologies! I have not had time to update this site for rather a while, but please do look at all the old posts as they are all relevant and interesting and sometimes unknown aspects of those gifted group of men, the Impressionists. They were called Impressionists by a quirk of fate; an art critic who attended their first exhibition took the name from Monet's Impression: Sunrise which the critic said was very much like a design for bad wallpaper...and of course one can buy that wallpaper today!

News is that I am still talking about my novel CLAUDE & CAMILLE: A NOVEL OF MONET this year and in 2013, and dates can be found on my website. I am speaking in New Jersey twice this June and in Manhattan in July, etc. Other news for those in the New York City area is that the Botanical Gardens has replicated part of the Giverny Gardens and it is gorgeous. Do go if you can!

the almost truthful letters a young Impressionist sent home

One of the frequent reports of life among the young painters who would be one day called the Impressionists are the letters sent home to his mother and father by Monet's best friend, the painter Jean Frédéric Bazille. Bazille came from a well-to-do family in Montpellier and moved to Paris to study medicine. After telling his family repeatedly that his medical exams were once more postponed, he confessed all he wanted to do was paint! (It was a big distraction to study anatomy when Renoir and Monet and Manet and Pissarro were in the other room of the studio talking painting!) From his letters we learn something of the joyous life of these young men, and Bazille's constant avoidance of his parents' attempts to marry him off. He was a very good person and rushed off to fight for France in the Franco-Prussian wars to a disastrous outcome.

This self-portrait from the Chicago Art Institute is rather strange; he was only about 24 or 25, and painted himself at least fifteen years older. Or perhaps it is the tension of staring at himself in the mirror or some discomfort about himself which made him paint that way. Various paintings and photos of him show him as dashingly handsome, humble while painting at his easel, and very much the formidable son of a great family in still another. The first drafts of my novel CLAUDE & CAMILLE featured Bazille as the main character; he later moved to third major character. I have many books about him, perhaps all that have been published in English and a few in French.

Reading about Pissarro's family

I arrived at the Clark Museum to speak about my novel the week after they took down their exquisite exhibit Pissarro's People, but I did get a copy of the excellent exhibition book. I was particularly struck at how much he loved his children and with what an atmosphere of unconditional love he raised them. He lost three of them before his own death; Jeanne, called Minette (shown right), died when she was nine. There are many portraits of her, from an enchanting little girl to a somber and sickly one. I don't know how she died or if any record is left. It was devastating for Pissarro and his wife.

The exhibition book is a fine portrait of the man as well as the painter...this most tender, humble painter! I would have loved to have known him.

Monet and storms at sea

The painter Turner, it is said, had himself tied to a mast to observe the violence of a storm at sea. Monet had his own near disaster. Standing on a rock to paint and very involved, he was suddenly swept into the churning sea by a wave. He was a Normandy man and a strong swimmer but his canvases and palette and paints rushed about him in the water. He climbed to safety with a beard tinged with colorful oil paint; one could say that that day Monet was himself a Monet. As today we are waiting for the hurricane to approach New York City, I felt inspired to post one of his paintings of storms! He did not do as many as Turner, though!

The Clark Museum in Williamstown Mass. is hosting a Pissarro exhibition through October 2nd...and sadly I won't see it, because I am not speaking there on my Monet novel until October 9th. I love Pissarro with all my heart! If someone does go, please do leave a comment here. Here is the url for the museum: CLARK MUSEUM. And let me once more recommend Pissarro's Letters to his Son Lucien.