Claude Monet: The Truth of Nature Exhibit at the Denver Art Museum

The Denver Art Museum was home to the most comprehensive U.S. exhibition of Monet paintings in more than two decades. This exhibition featured more than 120 paintings spanning Monet's entire career and focused on the celebrated French Impressionist artist's enduring relationship with nature and his response to the varied and distinct places in which he worked. The paintings were on display from October, 2019 thru February 2, 2020.

Monet traveled more extensively than any other Impressionist artist in search of new motifs. His journeys to varied places including the rugged Normandy coast, the sunny Mediterranean, London, the Netherlands, and Norway inspired artworks that were featured in the presentation. This exhibition uncovered Monet’s continuous dialogue with nature and its places through a thematic and chronological arrangement, from the first examples of artworks still indebted to the landscape tradition to the revolutionary compositions and series of his late years.

Claude Monet: The Truth of Nature explores Monet’s continuous interest in capturing the quickly changing atmospheres, the reflective qualities of water, and the effects of light, aspects that increasingly led him to work on multiple canvases at once. Additionally, the exhibition examined the critical shift in Monet’s painting when he began to focus on series of the same subject, including artworks from his series of Haystacks, Poplars, Waterloo Bridge, and Waterlilies.

I hope the following images give a bit of an overview of the presentation. We purchased tickets weeks in advance and hoped the weather would cooperate and allow us to attend.

The exhibit included these audio devices which gave an overview of each portion of Monet's life and details about the artwork

The exhibits had a fair number of people but the flow was quite orderly.

We were quite taken by his work. I've since visited our libraries  to obtain books to learn more of his life and work.