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The Grand Canal, Venice
By 1908 Claude Monet was thoroughly absorbed in the reclusive life of his home at Giverny, where he tended his gardens and explored in his paintings the panoply of rich vegetation, water and changing light and atmosphere surrounding him. In the summer of 1908, however, came an invitation from Mary Young Hunter, an American friend of Monet's wife, Alice, for them to visit her at the Palazzo Barbaro in Venice. Monet was reluctant to go but finally relented, and he and Alice arrived in Venice on 1 October. His first reactions confirmed his doubts about the advisability of the trip. He found Venice “too beautiful to be painted” and “unrenderable.” Nonetheless, he soon set to work on groups of paintings that expanded his traditional interest in seriality, his habit of painting the same motif studied at different times of day with a new degree of systematic observation: he would work from the same location, on the same view, every day at the same time, concentrating on the sensuous, sometimes almost iridescent visual effects produced by the shimmering haze of Venice.
The Grand Canal, Venice is one of a group of six closely related works that show Santa Maria della Salute across the grand Canal from the steps of the Palazzo Barbaro. Basically the same in size and composition, these paintings differ considerably in coloristic qualities, from high-keyed, prismatic division of hues (as in the example in San Francisco) to more unified, hazy harmonies.
All in all, Monet produced thirty-seven views of Venice between October and his return to France in December, of which his dealer Bernheim-Jeune acquired twenty-eight, eventually shown in the exhibition Claude Monet “Venise” in May-June, 1912.
-Steven A. Nash, Masterworks of European Painting in the California Palace of the Legion of Honor (1999)
- Artist
- Claude Monet
- Title
- The Grand Canal, Venice
- Date
- 1908
- Place of Creation
- Venezia
- Object Type
- Painting
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- 28 13/16 x 35 5/16 in. (73.2 x 89.7 cm)
- Credit Line
- Gift of Osgood Hooker
- Accession Number
- 1960.29
