La japonaise, Claude Monnet, 1876, oil on canvas, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
This work, also entitled “Japonerie”, was exhibited at the second Impressionist painters’ exhibition, and the large painting aroused passionate reactions.
Taking on a human-sized model was an exercise in style and a clear test of virtuosity.
For this painting, the artist forgot the Impressionist codes and preferred a marked realism with a figure with defined contours, unlike his landscape paintings.
Here, Monet flirts with the exotic, putting Japan in the foreground.
The painting shows a European woman wearing a Japanese kimono.
The model is Camille Doncieux, the master’s first wife, who poses as a Parisian dressed as a Japanese woman and wears a blond wig to emphasise her European origins.
Monet showed great mastery of colour, using warm, vivid tones, and was largely inspired by Japanese prints, of which he was a fervent collector. The kimono is said to have been imported from the Kabuki theatre.
The model looks at the viewer with connivance, fanning herself with a Japanese fan or “ôgi”.
The theme of the work reflects the painter’s attraction to the Land of the Rising Sun, as evidenced by the water garden at his house in Giverny.
The painting was not sold immediately because of its sexual ambiguity (the drawings on the kimono in front of the model’s private parts), which was denounced by the critics of the time.
Although it is one of the masterpieces of art history, Monet himself disowned the painting, believing that the depiction of his beloved wife lacked naturalness and did not pay homage to her.
Une construction qui a eu ses heures pratiques et qui désormais est devenue un atout esthétique un symbole sans doute une œuvre d’art… comme la grue Carola à Bilbao que j’ai pu “toucher” , proche du musée guggenheim, vestige industriel d’ingénierie et bien rouge ! L’art est aussi populaire et sanguin.
https://www.bilbaoturismo.net/BilbaoTurismo/fr/arte-al-aire-libre/la-grue-carola
ce qu’elle m’a inspiré… https://jamesetmots.blogspot.com/2019/08/au-pied-de-carola.html