Review: The Unknown Monet Exhibition Catalog

If you admire Monet's paintings and want to learn more about his working methods, how he learned to paint (he quit the atelier he was attending before he'd been taught painting), how he developed as an artist, what role drawing and sketching played in his painting, then this catalog from the Unknown Monet exhibition is indispensable reading. It was written using recently discovered and previously unpublished documentation on Monet's life and work, so genuinely presents new information on this famous Impressionist painter.

Monet was well aware of the importance of marketing an image, and would adapt his life story accordingly for his audience. He downplayed his skill as a draftsman and the role sketching or drawing played in his painting process to promote the illusion of painting an immediate impression. The curators for the Unknown Monet Exhibition researched Monet's pastels, sketchbooks, and drawings, revealing "for the first time that Monet repeatedly used pencil, chalk, and pastel not only to develop ideas for paintings but also to create independent works of art".¹ Reading the exhibition catalog provides a fresh look at Monet's development as an artist, and his working methods.

The catalog contains new biographical information about the life of the young Monet gleaned from an unpublished memoir (The Grand Journal by Comte Billecocq, a diplomat friend of the artist's family). It showcases pastel paintings, drawings, and Monet's sketchbooks that are relatively unknown to art lovers. Being a beautifully printed, large-format book, the artwork is reproduced at a good size for close study (and you won't have anyone bumping your elbows as at an exhibition).

It traces Monet's teenage success as a caricaturist, his studies in Paris and after he quit Gleyre's atelier, what he learned from the artists Boudin and Jongkind, and so on, revealing the progress he made as an artist, what he studied and attempted, how he developed. To any largely self-taught painter it's affirming to see this side to Monet's life and art.

The text is written in an accessible style (no unfathomable passages of artspeak), with obvious enthusiasm and enjoyment for the task, which makes reading it a delight. Any painter with an interest in Monet and the Impressionists will learn a lot from it, both about the artist and about developing as a painter.

^{1. Director's Foreword in catalog, pVII.}