The Museum of Fine Arts Boston holds one of the largest collections of the celebrated Impressionist painter Claude Monet’s work outside France. Gallery 252 is dedicated to Monet, providing an immersive experience of his work from the MFA’s permanent collection and select loans from private collections.
Monet returned time and again to his favorite locations and motifs. Early plein-air compositions from the 1870s as well as Grand Canal, Venice (1908), a later example inspired by his travels abroad, mark his enduring fascination with watery surfaces, utilizing vivid color and varied brushwork to dazzling effect.
A grouping of works related to his life-long appreciation for Japanese art and culture is anchored by La Japonaise (Camille Monet in Japanese Costume)(1876), a full-length portrayal of his wife Camille in a lavishly embroidered kimono. His 1875 composition, Meadow with Poplars, inspires another section, as its depiction of poppies, poplar trees, and grainstacks foreshadows the recurrence of these themes in his painting throughout the decades to follow.
