Lilla Cabot Perry: Reminiscences of Monet, Pt. 2

"Woman with a Parasol - Madame Monet
with Her Son" by Claude Monet

Reminiscences of Monet from 1889-1909 by Lilla Cabot Perry from The American Magazine of Art, March 1927, Vol. 18, no. 3, pp. 119-125:

"An intense artistic conscientiousness was one of Claude Monet's most marked traits. About 1905 I took a friend to his studio. She was much taken with a certain picture and tried hard to buy it, but he said he could not sell it until the series was finished as he did not feel sure it was up to his standard. A year or two later he dropped in one afternoon and casually mentioned that he had burnt up over thirty canvases that morning. I asked him whether Mrs. Blank's picture was among those destroyed, and he admitted that it was. 'I must look after my artistic reputation while I can,' he said. 'Once I am dead no one will destroy any of my paintings, no matter how poor they may be.'

His opinion of his own work was not, however, always calmly judicial. On one occasion, particularly disgusted at his own inadequacy, he decided to give up painting altogether. He was painting from his boat at the time, so overboard flew the forevermore useless paint box, palette, brushes and so forth into the peaceful waters of the little Epte. Needless to say, the night brought counsel and the following morning he arose, full of enthusiasm, but without any painting materials! It was, of course, a Sunday (such things always take place on Sundays), but a telegram to Paris sent a sympathetic color man flying to his shop and a complete kit left by the next train for Normandy where a reconverted painter awaited its arrival with savage impatience.

There were two pictures on the wall of his studio which I particularly liked. They were of his step-daughter in a white dress, a green veil floating in the breeze under a sunshade, on the brow of a hill against the sky. He told me that an eminent critic called them the Ascension and the Assumption! Seeing me looking at them one day with keen admiration, he took one down off the wall and showed me a tremendous criss-cross right through the center of the canvas, but so skillfully mended that nothing showed on the right side. I exclaimed with horror, and asked what on earth had happened to it. With a twinkle, he told me that one afternoon he had felt thoroughly dissatisfied with his efforts and had expressed his feelings by putting his foot through the canvas. As he happened to have on sabots, the result was painfully evident at the time."

To be continued

 

(From "Lilla Cabot Perry: An American Impressionist" by Meredith Martindale.)