THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, July 31, 1995 TAG: 9507290052
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY TERESA ANNAS, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 102 lines
THE WATERLILIES are blooming in Norfolk.
Impressionist Claude Monet painted boats and cathedrals and pretty women pruning dahlias. But it was in the last three decades of his life that he hooked into his most famous series - depicting a waterlily pond at Giverny, his garden paradise 40 miles west of Paris.
From his first sketches in 1897 until his death in 1926, when at age 86 he was painting enormous scenes intended for a panorama, Monet knew he had found a rich subject.
A critic once called him ``the Raphael of water.''
A painting from the series goes on view Tuesday at The Chrysler Museum of Art. ``Waterlilies,'' measuring about 35-by-39-inches, will be on view for a month in the Art Nouveau decorative arts gallery just off Huber Court.
The oil on canvas is on loan from an anonymous private collection, said Jefferson C. Harrison, the museum's chief curator. A new membership group at the museum - The Masterpiece Society, currently consisting of 42 donors who gave $2,500 or more - sponsored the special show.
``It's a rare and beautiful object, and certainly worthy of a visit all by itself,'' Harrison said.
``Of course, we would also encourage the visitor to continue their tour by visiting the museum's Impressionist gallery on the second floor, to look at masterpieces by contemporaries of Monet.''
Upstairs, see figure paintings by Edgar Degas, Camille Pissarro and Pierre Auguste Renoir, along with an Alfred Sisley landscape.
Coincidentally, the Renoir is a portrait of the daughters of Paul Durand-Ruel, the Paris art dealer who mounted the first showing of Monet's ``Waterlilies'' paintings in 1900.
The ``Waterlilies'' series can be broken into two phases, Harrison said. Early on, Monet included such visual anchors as the little humpbacked bridge he had built over his pond.
In the early 1900s, Monet began to reduce these ground references, and would only include a sliver of land along the picture's edge, or allow a leafy limb to venture subtly into the scene.
By 1905, the year of the loaned picture, he was making images that focused solely on the pond as a mirror, reflecting light and the surrounding environment.
Monet already was known for painting certain subjects repeatedly, such as London's Waterloo Bridge. His interest was in seeing how an object changes appearance through the day and from different atmospheric conditions.
The same curiosity arose with his ``Waterlilies'' series.
Monet told a writer in 1918: ``I have painted so many of these waterlilies, always shifting my vantage point, changing the motif according to the seasons of the year and then according to the different effects of light the seasons create as they change.
``And, of course, the effect does change constantly, not only from one season to another, but from one minute to the next as well, for the water flowers are far from being the whole spectacle; indeed, they are only its accompaniment.
``The basic element of the motif is the mirror of water, whose appearance changes at every instant because of the way bits of the sky are reflected in it, giving it life and movement. The passing cloud, the fresh breeze, the threat or arrival of a rainstorm, the sudden fierce gust of wind, the fading or suddenly refulgent light - all these things, unnoticed by the untutored eye, create changes in color and alter the surface of the water.
``It can be smooth, unruffled, and then, suddenly, there will be a ripple, a movement that breaks up into almost imperceptible wavelets or seems to crease the surface slowly, making it look like a wide piece of watered silk.''
For Monet, the pond was a metaphor for nature, Harrison said.
``I think that his early quest for optical truth becomes, in those final paintings from about 1900 on, more and more a quest for beauty - the beauty of nature, the inner life of nature, its spiritual force,'' Harrison added.
If the pond represents nature, it was a manmade symbol. In 1883, the Paris native leased a pink stucco house in Giverny. A decade later, he bought a parcel of land nearby - essentially an empty meadow, devoid of trees, with a babbling stream winding through it.
Along the stream, Monet dug a large hole for a pond, where he planted thousands of waterlilies with showy blossoms in every available hue - violet, red, orange, pink, mauve.
At the point where the stream flowed out of the pond, Monet built his little bridge. Along the banks, he planted exotic trees and weeping willows. Twisting paths, greenery-covered trellises and a multitude of flowers added to the fairy-tale look of Monet's garden.
At the center of this paradise, however, was Monet's pond. As the lily pads surfaced in great numbers across the pond, they resembled the footsteps of some water-walking god leaving pastel blooms in its wake.
Monet called the garden, along with the pond, his ``last love'' to which his final canvases paid homage.
``It's exceeding hard work, and yet how seductive it is! To catch the fleeting minute, or at least its feeling,'' Monet said.
``A man could devote his entire life to such work.'' MEMO: RELATED PROGRAMS
Gallery talks: noon on Wednesday, Aug. 9, 16 and 23; 2 p.m. on
Sunday, 13 and 20
Children's video, workshop and tea: 2 p.m. Aug. 13
Flower lectures and workshops: 10 a.m. to noon on Aug. 14, 21 and 28
Tour on flowers in Monet's garden: 2 p.m. Aug. 27 ILLUSTRATION: Color photo of "Waterlilies"
by CNB