Revealing the Monet of Pencil and Paper “The Unknown Monet: Pastels and Drawings” shows that the Impressionist wasn’t the anti-draftsman he led the public to believe.Whenever a journalist or collector asked him how he worked, he talked incessantly about the liberating possibilities of painting outdoors, forgoing any mention of the sketches, pastels and prints he quietly produced throughout his life.
“Monet wanted to present himself as the great painter of his day,” said Richard Kendall, curator at large at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Mass. “It was a kind of PR exercise, a way of defining himself. But the big, teasing question has always been why didn’t he want people to know he drew?”
I've always had a soft spot in my brain for Monet, probably because my decision to (eventually) move to Chicago was predicated upon a college road trip to the city with a van full of friends. A few of us ingested a tab or three of something or other, and spent several lifetimes wandering the Art Institute of Chicago in slack-jawed wonder. The room full of Monet haystacks was especially moving, as were the Cubist paintings (which in my altered state I could reassemble in my mind, back and forth from the painting as displayed and the painting in 'normal' perspective). I'd go on, but you get the idea.
