Monet and the Japanese world

Claude Monet almost never left Europe and even never traveled to Japan. But in his Giverny home in France,he surrounded himself with Japanese woodblock prints(56 in his dining room). He first collected Japanese prints in the 1860s,andthis passion would last for over three decades. At the end of his life, he owned 231 Japanese engravings.

Monet never recopied the Japanese engravings. But Monet carefully analyzed the prints. The structure and the colours of Mont Fuji by Hokusai inspired Monet for a canvas of the Grainstack. The Japanese artists liked to feature the anecdotic or dramatic moments whereas Monet concentrated on light,which was the very subject of the canvas.

Like many other artists,Monet considered Japanese culture as very artistic,shaped by the refind aesthetic tastes of its people. As far as Monet is concerned,the way Japanese art shaped his style and the way he saw the world around him can be noticed in many of his canvases as early as the 1870s. He began collecting woodblocks by the greatest masters,Hokusai,Hiroshige,Utamaro....

Through Monet paintings,we could clearly establish a link with a Japanese printmaking world especially with his well-known Japanese bridge in Giverny or in his famous series of Haystack as above as well as the Glycines,and notably his Nymphéas.

The world of Claude Monet was ever since influenced by this oriental tradition of the philosophical contemplation of the nature.

When Monet travelled to Norway to Sandviken village in 1985 he imagined he was in Japan.