Paris: Bernheim-Jeune et Cie, 1912 (05), 27,7×21,8 cm. Softcover. Unpaginated. French. Extremely scarce, exhibition catalogue, heavily illustrated by the era standards, featuring 8 full page sepia illustrations and 1 colour plate tipped in making this one of the earliest catalogues to include coloured illustrations. Printed on kraft paper. Text once more by Octave Mirbeau. Full list of 29 works with titles and dimensions.
Copies held in libraries: Getty Research Institute | Harvard University | Museum of Fine Arts (Boston) | Princeton University | National Art Library, Victoria and Albert Museum
In 1908, Monet visited Venice with his second wife, Alice. While there, he created a series of now-famous works around some of the iconic monuments of the city […] Few days after Monet’s return to Paris, Bernheim-Jeune acquired twenty-eight of the thirty-seven views of Venice, although Monet kept the pictures in his studio until 1912 to add their finishing touches. After the death of Alice in 1911, Monet finally agreed on a date for the exhibition at Bernheim-Jeune. Claude Monet Venise opened on May 28, 1912, and was greeted with significant critical acclaim.
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“After so much procrastination, Monet soon adopted a rigorous schedule in Venice. Alice’s of his workday establishes that from the very inception of his Venetian campaign, Monet organized his time and conceived of the seriality of his work very differently from his previous projects. In Venice, Monet divided his daily schedule into periods of approximately two hours, undertaken at the same time every day and on the same given motif. Unlike his usual methods of charting the changes of time and light as the course of the day would progress, here Monet was interested in painting his different motifs under exactly the same conditions. One could say that he had a fixed appointment with his motifs at the same time each day. The implication of this decision is very simple; for Monet in Venice, time was not to be one of the factors of variations for his motifs. Rather, it was the ‘air’, or what he called ‘the envelope’ – the surrounding atmospheric conditions, the famous Venetian haze – that became the principal factor of variation with these motifs” [J. Pissaro, 1977]
condition: Minor defects on covers. Inside clean and bright. An excellent copy of a historic catalogue.
