Monet: Painting Time

Based mainly in France, Monet lived through an era which saw the rise of railways, industrialisation, the modern city, and the adoption of standardised timekeeping. Drawing on new research, the show explores how Monet responded to these seismic changes through his work. The exhibition centres on Monet’s profound and evolving relationship with time. We see how he echoed the rapid pace of modern life by capturing the fleeting, instantaneous ‘impressionist’ moment, through works such as Arrival of the Normandy Train, Gare Saint-Lazare (1877). We are also shown, in celebrated series such as Poplars on the Epte (1891–1897), Monet’s attempts, through variations of the same subject, to capture a specific, transient instant in time. Finally, the show reveals Monet’s enduring relationship with nature and how, as a subject in perpetual movement, it shifts with the passing years and seasons. We see his retreat into his beloved garden in Giverny, resulting in the creation of the world-famous Water Lillies cycle.