Crespelle, Jean-Paul. Monet. Stanford: Longmeadow Press, 1992.
This monograph, documenting the life of Claude Monet, has really changed the way I view him as a person. I still admire his paintings, but find his character to be self-centered and egotistical.
There are many choices in Monet's life that I disagree with. His way of spending money and the way he treated his family are the main things I disagree with. However, his art does not seem to reveal the true type of person that he was.
The real reason for his family living in the poorest conditions and literally starving is because Monet lived far beyond his means. Crespell describes this in the following quote. He writes:
In those inflamtory times, a doctor in a good area could afford to employ two servants and hire a carriage to make his visits on an income of 10,000 francs a year. On the face of it, there seems no reason why Monet should have been always asking for money and sending desperate appeals to his loyal friends, Manet, Zola, and Caillebotte. The truth is, if he was financially stretched and sometimes even in real need, it was because he allowed money to slip through his fingers - he always lived up to and beyond his means. While Pissarro's family ate potatoes, the Monets employed two servants, a nuremaid for Jean and a gardener. They ate lavishly and well, drank the best cognac and ordered fine wine by the barrel from Bordeaux. Camille would pose for her husband in ravishing and expensive ensembles. (23)
Two more quotes confirm the poor spending habits of Monet, plus gives proof that he hardly ever paid back anything that he borrowed. Crespell writes:
He owed the village butcher 300 francs and had to leave Sevres almost overnight, destroying 200 canvases before he went rather than let them be seized by the bailiffs. In spite of his precautions the canvases were patched up and sold off as job lots at thirty francs per bundle of fifty. (13)
The following is the second quote:
Monet owed money everywhere, to the man who sold him his materials, to the baker, the butcher, even to a painter and decorator called Charles Braque, who by the chance had a son called Georges... (25)
The following two quotes definitely stirred ill feelings when I read them. I don't know if a this uncaring attitude toward the family was common among all men during the nineteenth century, or if this was the way Monet alone treated his family. In any case, I found both these situations very unacceptable. In the first, Crespell writes:
Monet's companion Camille, seven years his junior, was forced to give birth to her first son Jean in appalling circumstances. She was alone and without money and her only support came from a friend, a medical student. (13)
The second I find more disagreeable than the first. Monet left his family in France and fled to England when the Prussian War broke out in 1870. Crespelle describes the event:
An atmosphere of general panic had overtaken Le Havre, when Monet went there to find out the latest news. The shipping company offices were literally besieged with people desperate to leave for England. Caught up in the confusion, Monet must have lost his head. On an impulse he boarded a ship and left. Never for one instant did he think of himself as a deserter. Worse still, he did not spare a thought for Camille and the baby, left without money in Trouville, the hotel bill unpaid. It was only by some miracle that his young wife of a few weeks found a way to join him. (19)
I found this book to be very revealing about Monet's attitude and beliefs. The information that I've learned about him has not changed the way I veiw his art. I still find it hard to believe that the same man that painted so delicately, could be the same man that left his family during the outbreak of war. This book has really changed my outlook of Monet the "person", but has had little effect on my opinion of Monet the "artist."