The Debate on Claude Monet’s Vision
Questions surrounding Monet’s vision have swirled since the artist was still alive. Between speculation about failing eyesight, cataracts, color blindness, to flat-out blindness, what plagues the great painter?
Nobody was asking these questions as a result of poor planning, but at the time, word of mouth could often get scrambled like a poor game of telephone. People also wanted an underdog. Could you imagine a great painter whose vision loss didn’t hold him back?
Today, we will answer all the questions surrounding Monet’s vision.
Was Monet blind?
The short answer is no. The long answer is that Monet suffered from cataracts later in life that impacted the way he saw color and light. By 1908, distant objects in his paintings appeared to be fuzzier than in previous works. 10 years later, Monet said that he could no longer see colors with the same intensity or interpret sunlight, which was an important part of the Impressionist movement he had a hand in pioneering.
You can notice this shift between his paintings, “The Flowered Garden, 1865” (pre-cataracts) and “The Japanese Bridge, 1922” (post-cataracts).
While his vision wasn’t completely lost, he was declared legally blind in September of 1922 and received surgery on his right eye after proper diagnosis. Recovery was slow and led him to become depressed before a second operation the following year. Neither surgery proved to be entirely successful, with Monet still needing tinted glasses. He experienced color and visual impairments, but continued to paint until he passed away in December 1926.
Monet’s story shows us the power of persistence and the refusal to give up the things we love. Even when things got hard, and it became physically difficult to paint, he did not cease the thing he loved most. Because of this, we still enjoy over 2,000 masterpieces passionately painted by his hand, including hundreds of thousands of people visiting the Musée de l’Orangerie in France to see his Water Lilies in person.
Learn more about Beyond Monet, an immersive experience that brings you into Monet’s paintings, here.
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