Exhibition: The Unknown Monet

Get ready to adjust what you thought you knew about Monet, his oil paintings, and his painting techniques... For starters, what about the concept "Monet the pastel painter"? or "Monet, the man with the pocket sketchbook"? The revelations come from the exhibition The Unknown Monet which challenges the long-held understanding of Monet's artistic process.

The exhibition reveals that he didn't paint directly onto his canvases all the time as he strove to have the world believe, that he did indeed create studies and sketches to develop his ideas for paintings. The exhibition also showcases Monet's work done using pastel, a medium generally associated with his fellow Impressionist Degas.

The Unknown Monet opens at the Royal Academy of Arts in London today (until 10 June 2007), then moves to the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts (24 June to 16 September 2007). If you're a painter who's fanatical about Monet's work, it's definitely an exhibition to try to get too. If you're just a regular Monet fan, take a read of the Royal Academy Exhibition Brochure (it takes a little while to download, but is worth the wait).

See Also:
• Exhibition Information: Royal Academy of Arts in London and Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute
• Royal Academy Exhibition Brochure (in .pdf format)
• Exhibition Catalog (Yale University Press)
• Palettes and Techniques of the Impressionist Masters: Claude Monet

^{Image: "Waterloo Bridge", c. 1901 by Claude Monet (1840–1926). Pastel, 305 x 480 mm. Triton Foundation, The Netherlands}