The culminating and most personally satisfying works in the long career of Impressionist master Claude Monet (1840-1926) were the paintings he undertook in the last two decades of his life, when he concentrated wholly on the now famous gardens of his private paradise-on-earth at Giverny, France.
Twenty-two of these treasured canvases, including “Yellow and Mauve Irises” (1925) and his masterpiece “Water Lilies” (1919), are on view at Baltimore’s Walters Art Gallery, 600 N. Charles St., 410-547-9000, through May 31 in a just-opened show, “Monet: Paintings of Giverny from the Musee Marmottan.”
Honored as “the father of Impressionism,” Monet was also parent to the scenes and settings he so lovingly put to canvas, having himself created the flower and lily gardens he painted with as much care and genius as can be found in his art.
Monet began renting his country retreat at Giverny, about 40 miles northwest of Paris, in 1883. Seven years later, he purchased the three-acre property. Adding two more acres, he transformed the simple kitchen garden into a flowering marvel and dammed the adjoining stream in Japanese fashion to create an Oriental lily pond.
In the last years of his life, he needed no other subject for his brush, and no other world save that within his garden walls.
The Walters, one of the lesser known but always rewarding venues of the East Coast cultural scene, is accompanying this happy springtime show with “Before Monet: Landscape Painting in France” and “Impressionist Masters: Highlights From The Walters Collection,” both drawn from its significant holdings of 19th Century art.
The nearby Baltimore Museum of Art, North Charles and 31st Streets, 410-396-7100, is celebrating spring with a more whimsical and contemporary show: “The Great American Pop Art Store: Multiples of the Sixties.” Andy Warhol’s “Campbell Soup Can” and “Brillo Box,” Roy Lichtenstein’s “Paper Plate,” Claes Oldenburg’s “Wedding Souvenir,” and delightful and outrageous creations by Jim Dine, Larry Rivers, James Rosenquist, Lucas Samaras and Wayne Thiebaud, among others, will be on display through May 24.
China in New York
A very major attraction in New York this spring is the Guggenheim’s awesome “China: 5,000 Years” mega-exhibition. Loaned from the People’s Republic of China, this extravaganza’s 500 objects are divided between the Guggenheim’s Frank Lloyd Wright-designed uptown museum, 5th Avenue at 89th Street (through June 3), and its subsidiary SoHo location, Broadway at Prince Street (through May 24).
A collection assembled from all over China and dating back to 3,000 B.C., it is perhaps predictable but fascinating, including rare, ancient landscape paintings and gigantic stone Buddhist sculpture.
While in New York, one might want to stray off the beaten path for the offbeat “Sun Ships: Photographs by Barry M. Winiker,” at the South Street Seaport Museum, 207 Front St., 212-748-8600, through June 21.
The ships are cruise liners and the photographer is one whose work may be familiar to readers of newspaper travel sections, but these 33 images concentrate on the play of light and shadow and the sometimes fabulous, sometimes bizarre architecture of these floating summer resorts.
Two at the Getty
The dazzling new mountaintop Getty Center in Los Angeles, 1200 Getty Center Dr., 310-440-7300, has two shows on display.
“Framing the Asian Shore: Nineteenth Century Photographs of the Ottoman Empire,” through June 28, is a collection of never-before-publicly-exhibited photos of Imperial Turkey, most of them having to do with Istanbul, up to its early 20th Century decline and fall.
Also on view, through July 5, is “Prayerbook for a Queen: the Hours of Jeanne d’Evreux.” A tiny, 3 1/2- by 2 1/2-inch 14th Century illuminated French manuscript containing some of the most exquisite Gothic painting of the Medieval era, this fabled book of hours is on loan from the famous Cloisters collection of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. The bound illustrations are religious in theme but amusing and even frolicsome in aspect. This is the first time these rare works are being presented together in book form in America.
Calder in D.C.
Springtime visitors to Washington can treat themselves to a very major, important, impressive and admission-free celebration of artist/sculptor Alexander Calder (1898-1976) and the centenary of his birth in Philadelphia.
Devoted mostly to sculpture, this sprawling show will display more than 250 of Calder’s works, including “Dog” and “Duck,” wire sculptures he did at age 11; “Goldfish Bowl” (1929), in which the fish “swim,” and sculpted portraits of such celebrated friends and contemporaries as artist Fernand Leger and entertainer Josephine Baker.
This is the most important Calder show in 50 years. It closes July 12 at the National Gallery, 4th Street and Constitution Avenue., N.W., 202-737-4215, then moves to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, its only other venue, in September.
