Leon Monet: Claude Monet's Older Brother Helped Shape the Impressionist Movement: New Paris Exhibit
Claude Monet’s Older Brother Helped Shape the Impressionist Movement, Smithsonian Mag., March 21, 2023. Ed.
- A new exhibition explores the legacy of Léon Monet, who taught Claude about color and purchased his art. -
In 1875, a poor artist named Claude Monet was selling his art at an auction in Paris. He was still relatively unknown, and his paintings were not slated to perform especially well. Surprisingly, though, the sale was a success, mostly due to one enthusiastic buyer who helped drive up the prices—a buyer listed in the records by the name Monet. The artist, however, wasn’t buying his own paintings. And now, for the first time, a new exhibition is exploring the legacy of the early admirer who was: Léon Monet, the famous Impressionist’s older brother & patron.
“It’s never been known before, but without Léon there would not have really been a Monet—the artist the world knows today,” Geraldine Lefebvre, exhibition curator at the Luxembourg Museum in Paris, tells Thomas Adamson of the Associated Press (AP). The exhibition, titled “Léon Monet: Brother of the Artist and Collector,” opened at the Paris museum last week & features around 100 works of art by Claude Monet & other painters that his brother supported. Léon, who was 4 years older than Claude, worked as a color chemist in Rouen, France, & enjoyed financial success.
A lover of the arts, Léon patronized several famous Impressionists of the era, including Pierre-Auguste Renoir & Alfred Sisley.
- Leon Monet Exhibit, Musee du Luxembourg, Paris. 2023.
Claude followed Léon to Rouen & worked as his assistant—an experience that fundamentally shaped his understanding of color. Léon experimented with synthetic pigments, using chemicals to create new colors that were much more vivid than the natural pigments artists traditionally worked with. An early Claude Monet illustration from the 1860s exemplifying the technique will feature in the exhibition. By the end of the 19th century, “80% of all Impressionists’ work” used these synthetic colors in their art, Lefebvre tells the AP. Lefebvre began researching Léon more than 3 years ago. She visited Monet’s great-grandchildren & searched through photo albums to shed light on the family. Records of Léon were particularly hard to find. “I saw his name here & there but not much else,” she tells the Guardian’s Kim Willsher. “It really piqued my curiosity.”
In the process, Lefebvre discovered a portrait of Léon that Claude painted in 1874. Stored away in a private collection, it had never been seen by the public. Monet painted the work outside & intended to finish it later, but “Renoir & Sisley advised their friend to leave it as is,” writes Euronews’ Theo Farrant. “Léon Monet didn’t agree & hid the painting until his death.” Why has Léon been ignored by art historians? For a long time, they thought that the 2 brothers were estranged. The truth is that they were estranged—but not until the early 1900s. Around that time, Claude’s son Jean contracted a fatal respiratory infection from exposure to the chemicals at Léon’s factory...More, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/claude-monet-brother-leon-impressionist-movement-180981844/