Two Sister Paintings by Monet Reunited in Washington D.C.

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Next stop for Monet amateurs is the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., where two sister paintings will be reunited through August 8.

For the first time since their creation, two sister paintings named Jardin de l’artiste à Vétheuil produced by French Impressionist painter Claude Monet are reunited in the National Gallery of Art located in Washington D.C. Both paintings were produced by Monet in 1881, as he focused on the sceneries of the Parisian suburbs. One of the paintings was located at the Norton Simon Museum in Los Angeles, California, while the other was already in D.C. in the Ailsa Mellon Bruce Collection. They can now both be found on the main floor of the West Building, in Gallery 85, until the second painting returns to Los Angeles on August 8.

Claude-Monet-jardin-Vetheuil

“It’s a turning point in terms of his career, his struggles, he’s turning more toward landscape, he’s becoming more interested in atmospheric effects,” outlines a curator of 19th century French paintings Kimberly Jones for the National Gallery in an interview for the Agence France Presse (AFP).

As part of a series of four paintings, we observe notable differences between the two: “Where Monet layered meridian green thickly on top of cobalt blue to give more interest to the sky in the Norton Simon’s picture, in the companion piece it’s defined instead by contrasts of thick and thin, and patches of exposed canvas ground,” as explained by the Agence France Presse.

These two paintings could have highlighted the start of his interest in garden proto-series. Monet later become known for his series of works illustrating a single subject, as he painted the Rouen Cathedral 26 times, Venice 37 times, or even water lilies 250 times. They were painted almost ten years before Monet’s famous series of works of the same scene shown through different seasons and daytimes. “All of the things that have been published about these two pictures we’re starting to question just by having them in the same space,” concludes assistant curator Emily Talbot for Norton Simon in the interview with Agence France Presse.