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Giverny Exhibition Recasts Monet’s Early Years for the Centenary

Curators use rare international loans to show how his first Giverny studies set up the Water Lilies series.

Overview

  • The Musée des Impressionnismes in Giverny has opened a focused show on Monet’s 1883–1890 Giverny period for the 2026 centenary.
  • Curators assembled about thirty paintings with maps, photos and archives after a three‑year loan effort that drew works from Switzerland, Japan and the United States.
  • The exhibition portrays Monet as a restless experimenter whose serial studies of light and weather foreshadowed his monumental Water Lilies panels.
  • Highlights include early views of haystacks, poppies and poplars, and river scenes he painted from a small boat to catch changing reflections at close range.
  • The program sits within Giverny’s visitor ecosystem, where Monet’s house and gardens attract about 800,000 people a year and the museum draws roughly 190,000.