Exhibit Monet in Normandy

We had the great fortune of getting tickets to the Monet in Normandy exhibition at the NC Museum of Art. I wish we had gone earlier; it opened October 15 and runs through this Sunday, January 14. We became members of the museum and took among the last tickets remaining for 4:30p today; they are going to be open 24 hours over the weekend and even those tickets are now sold out (the last to go were, I heard, for 3:30a Sunday morning entrance)!

Impressionistic painter Claude Monet (1840-1926), of course, is a great French painter whose painting Impression, Sunrise defined the term impressionism. He spent much of his life in Normandy painting outdoors en plein air. This amazing exhibit collects 50 of Monet's paintings from private and public collections, exploring his work while in Normandy (and Giverny, such as his famous waterlilies from his garden). The exhibit, I believe, is visiting San Francisco, Cleveland, and Raleigh only (last June 17-September 17 in San Francisco's Legion of Honor, and opening next month February 18-May 20 in the Cleveland Museum of Art).

Any one painting of Monet's is moving. But seeing fifty is an amazing treat. I particularly loved images of the Seine river (including one, The Seine at Giverny, Morning Mists (1897), that is in the permanent collection of the NC Museum of Art itself!); The Cliff Walk, Pourville (1882); The Path of La Cavée, Pourville (1882); Wheat Field (1881); and images of the huge arched Manneporte in Etretat. By the way, the local Raleigh News and Observer newspaper has a nice page online that includes multimedia, including a display of 23 of the paintings in the exhibition.