It’s difficult to imagine that Claude Monet, the world-famous founder of the Impressionism painting movement, ever had a crisis of confidence about his most beloved and iconic artwork ─ water lilies. Yet he told his dealer that he was giving up on creating a show of paintings of water lilies. Only a fortuitously timed trip to Venice strengthened Monet’s resolve to return to painting the lilies at Giverny, resulting in the most gorgeous art of his career.
Monet and his second wife, Alice, fell in love with Venice, turning their two-week vacation into a two-month-long stay. Although Monet, then 68, initially feared that the city was “too beautiful to be painted,” he created some of his most captivating paintings while there. Something about the combination of the ethereal light, aged stone, and reflective water has captivated artists for hundreds of years, and Monet was no exception.
The blockbuster exhibit, “Monet and Venice,” a joint effort by the Brooklyn Museum and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (at de Young Museum), displays more than 20 of Monet’s dazzling paintings of the Italian city as well as select works from across his career, including his iconic Water Lilies. To put Monet’s Venice period in better perspective, the exhibition also features views of Venice by other world-class artists, including Canaletto, Renoir, Sargent, Turner, and Whistler.
This wonderful exhibit is divided into five thematic galleries. The first gallery of “Monet and Venice” presents a representative sampling of Monet’s works before his 1908 trip to Venice. His “Waterloo Bridge: Effect of Sunlight in the Fog”, painted in 1903 (from his room at London’s Savoy Hotel), is a fine example of the artist’s fascination with the encircling, hazy light he described as the enveloppe.
The exhibit continues with a large array of views of Venice by other artists, beginning with two large examples by Canaletto, painted in the mid-1750s. Although Monet and Canaletto painted some identical views, the results are remarkably different. Canaletto’s are precise and detailed; Monet’s are ethereal, such that the subject matter may not be easily recognizable.
Some of Monet’s contemporaries, like Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Paul Signac, painted Venice in their own Impressionist style. Monet bought Signac’s watercolor of Venice, which is on display in this gallery. Paintings by Sargent, Turner, and Whistler also shows Venice in all its glory.
The highlight of the show is the gallery containing Monet’s Venice paintings. And they are breathtakingly gorgeous. He has beautifully captured the shimmer of the water and the changing iridescent light. Monet’s Venice paintings are uncluttered, containing only water, sky, and buildings. Unlike the busy scenes painted by other artists, Monet’s Venice is empty – devoid of people. For example, his several works of Venice’s Palazzi contain only buildings, sky, and canals; that is all that is needed.
The final small gallery displays a few of Monet’s post-Venice water lily paintings. And they are superb. The artist wrote, “My trip to Venice has had the advantage of making me see my [water lily] canvases with a better eye.” Monet continued to paint for almost two decades after that trip.
Works by Monet have been lent by national and international museums, including the Art Institute of Chicago; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Philadelphia Museum of Art; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; and important private collections.
The exhibition is extremely well curated by Lisa Small, Senior Curator of European Art at the Brooklyn Museum, and by Melissa E. Buron, Director of Collections and Chief Curator at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, who conceived of the exhibition when she was the Director of Curatorial Affairs at the Fine Art Museums of San Francisco.
By Emily S. Mendel
© Emily S. Mendel 2026 All Rights Reserved
