Irises, water lilies, and poppies can be spotted around Chicago this winter, colorful images promoting the exhibition Monet and Chicago at the Art Institute of Chicago through June 14, 2021.

The show explores Chicago’s early connection to Claude Monet, whose canvases began arriving in this city around the time of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition because of a few visionary collectors. Monet paintings adorned the walls of Bertha and Potter Palmer’s “castle” in Lincoln Park, Martin A. Ryerson’s mansion in Kenwood, and joined the art collection of the Union League Club of Chicago.

One hundred and forty years later, the city is still in love with the Impressionist master. The Art Institute of Chicago, which was the first American museum to purchase a Monet painting, now owns the largest collection of the artist’s works outside of Paris. More than thirty paintings and numerous drawings are held in its permanent collection.

Gallery placards from Monet and Chicago at the Art Institute of Chicago describe the contributions of Bertha Palmer and Martin A. Ryerson.

Four Monet Paintings

“The major cultural event in America during the years of Impressionist development,” writes art historian William H. Gerdts “was undoubtedly the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago.” [Gerdts 191] “While Impressionism by no means dominated the American display,” notes Gerdts, “in the official French section it was completely absent.” Works of several notable French Impressionists—including Degas, Manet, Pissarro, Sisley and Monet—were on view at the 1893 World’s Fair through the efforts of American art collectors as part of the “Loan Collection of Foreign Works from Private Galleries in the United States.”

Among this collection in Gallery 30 of the Palace of Fine Arts were four paintings by Claude Monet. Interestingly none of them were on loan from the Chicago collectors mentioned above. The Revised Catalogue, Department of Fine Arts (Conkey, 1893) lists these works, but matching their catalog titles and scant descriptions from other sources to known works of Monet proves challenging. Works about the Columbian Exposition and treatises on Monet offer little additional information about these canvases, and the Art Institute’s Monet and Chicago show makes only passing mention of them.

We offer here a tentative identification of the four Monet paintings exhibited in Chicago in 1893.

Dawn on the Coast of the North Sea

Dawn on the Coast of the North Sea (catalog no. 3005) was lent by Mr. Albert Spencer of New York. If the painting survives, it does not currently go by this title.

The composition was described as having a “sun looking like a spot of sealing wax.” [“Art in Three Rooms”] and a “pale crimson sunrise.” [Bancroft 693]

Art critic Mary Ford noted that this painting “gives exactly the effect of the first yellow rays of the sun falling over the water through the clear blue atmosphere of early morning, and the difference between morning and evening air is made fully manifest by the artist.” [Ford] Describing this painting as “an interesting contrast to” Monet’s Morning Fog (see below), critic Lucy Monroe wrote that “the clear, cold Dawn on the Coast of the North Sea is less beautiful but quite as conspicuously veracious.” [Monroe]

Based on the title and these descriptions, Dawn on the Coast of the North Sea perhaps could refer to Impression, Sunrise (1873), now in collection of the Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris, as Impression, Soleil Levant.

Was Monet’s Impression, Sunrise (1873) exhibited as Dawn on the Coast of the North Sea at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition? [Image from Wikipedia.org.]

Morning Fog

On the same wall in the Palace of Fine Arts hung Monet’s Morning Fog (catalog no. 3009), also lent to the Exposition by Mr. Albert Spencer. Matching this title to any known Monet canvas presents a second mystery.

The work was described as depicting “an iridescent sea breaking at the foot” [“Art in Three Rooms”] of a “dimly outlined cliff.” [Bancroft 693] Lucy Monroe wrote that “Morning Fog is exquisitely delicate, exquisitely suggestive of the pale colors of the dawn on rising mists. No one who has seen the sun rise in northern latitudes, who has watched its cold diffusion of the lingering fog, transfigured by yellow light, can doubt the truth of this picture of it.” [Monroe]

Listed in the catalog of a 1905 exhibition at the Copley Society of Art in Boston is a Monet painting titled Morning Fog (1888), lent by Mrs. Potter Palmer. [Loan Collection 23] This work, however, seems more likely to be the painting now titled Morning Haze (1888) and held in the National Gallery of Art. Although similar in name, this painting does not depict the sea.

So where is Morning Fog? One Monet work that appears to match the coastal description of the painting on display at the 1893 World’s Fair is The Effect of Fog Near Dieppe (1882).

Was Monet’s The Effect of Fog Near Dieppe (1882) exhibited as Morning Fog at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition? [Image from Wikiart.org.]

Harbor of Havre

Harbor at Havre (catalog no. 3014) is the one Monet work from the Columbian Exposition that is easiest to identify. Now named Port of Le Havre (1874), the painting resides in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, which records its provenance as being a bequest of Mrs. Frank Graham Thomson in 1961. The painting is thought to have been purchased from Monet by M. De Nittis of Paris in 1878 and then sold to Frank Thomson circa 1893. While this latter date offers additional support for matching this to Harbor at Havre, Monet did paint this harbor in many of his works. For example, a painting related to Port of Le Havre in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art shows “an identical view of the harbor, but on a rainy day, when shimmering pools of water dotted the quay.”

Contemporary descriptions of the composition of Harbor at Havre are consistent with Port of Le Havre (1874). Reporters at the 1893 fairgrounds noted that this Monet’s painting “shows the blue bay” (“Art in Three Rooms”) with “its smiling waters and quaint, old-fashioned houses” [Bancroft 693]

A writer for the Chicago Tribune observed that Monet’s Harbor of Havre “gives a view of a basin of blue water surrounded by houses and a quay, where a crowd of people are walking. In this the artist has seized a momentary effect with remarkable accuracy. In working with sufficient rapidity to secure such an effect a painter must naturally forego all attempts at representation of detail.” [“Landscape and Its Painters”]

The work elicited more response from critics than Monet’s other works on display in Chicago. Lucy Monroe wrote that “… the gayest of these paintings is the Harbor of Havre, covered with bright splashes of color which take form and substance at a little distance and give one a radiant picture of busy life and activity in the beautiful blue harbor.” [Monroe]

Mary H. Ford offered this observant commentary about viewing Harbor at Havre:

“In looking at an impressionist picture the observer must always stand far enough away to get the blended effect of the colors and their union in an atmosphere, and this last is beautifully given again in Claude Monet’s Harbor at Havre, No. 2,956. The public usually stands close enough to punch a hole in this picture, and then proceeds to swear at it, but if one’s vision is lengthened to the doorway of the room in which it hangs it becomes an exquisite bit of morning light, and does not profess to be anything more than this.” [Ford]

Monet’s Port of Le Havre (1874) likely was exhibited as Harbor at Havre at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition. [Image from the Philadelphia Museum of Art.]

Snow Scene

A fourth Monet work on display at the Chicago Fair was titled Snow Scene (catalog no. 3021), lent by Mr. Alexander J. Cassatt of Philadelphia.

Snow Scene did not evoke much praise from critics visiting the Columbian Exposition, who described the canvas as a depiction of “barren stones and steep pathway,” [“Art in Three Rooms”] and a “bleak and desolate pathway” [Bancroft 693] that was “surprisingly gray and black for Monet, proving that his eye does not see color where it is not present.” [Monroe]

Where is Snow Scene today? A painting going by the same title was exhibited with Morning Fog in the same 1905 exhibition at the Copley Society of Boston; it is listed in the catalog as being lent by Arthur A. Carey, Esq. [Loan Collection 19] Of the many winter scenes painted by Monet before 1893, few appear to match the described gray-and-black canvas showing a pathway of barren stones, but at least one does depict “a railway train passing through a cut in the hills.” Could the painting exhibited in the Palace of Fine Arts have been Train in the Snow at Argenteuil (1875)?

Was Monet’s Train in the Snow at Argenteuil (1875) exhibited as Snow Scene at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition? [Image from Wikiart.org]

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This brief review of the paintings of Claude Monet exhibited at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition offers more questions than answers. We welcome further information that could identify his four works and their location today. Please use the Comments section below.

At the debut of Monet’s paintings in Chicago in 1888, the Chicago Daily Tribune offered a provocative question: “Why go to Paris since Paris has come to Chicago?” Liberally used in materials for the Art Institute’s Monet and Chicago exhibition, the quote takes on a somber new meaning during a global pandemic that keeps most of us at home and that even temporarily shut down the Art Institute. The opportunity to walk through galleries filled with splendid paintings of French coastlines, rivers, and gardens, is a special treat. Readers able to visit to this exhibit should not miss the chance before it closes in June 2021.

SOURCES

“Art in Three Rooms” DeKalb (IL) Chronicle Oct. 21, 1893, p. 4.

Bancroft, Hubert Howe The Book of the Fair. The Bancroft Company, 1893.

Ford, Mary H. “The Impressionist Pictures at the Fair” Chicago Daily Tribune Oct. 8, 1893, p. 6.

Gerdts, William H. American Impressionism. Abbeville Press, 1995.

Kalitina, ‎Nina; Brodskaya, Nathalia Claude Monet. Parkstone International, 2012.

Kalitina, ‎Nina; Brodskaya, Nathalia Claude Monet: Volume 2. Parkstone International, 2015.

“Landscape and Its Painters” Chicago Daily Tribune Sept. 24, 1893, p. 35.

Loan Collection of Paintings by Claude Monet and Eleven Sculptures by Auguste Rodin. Copley Society (Boston, Mass.), 1905.

Monroe, Lucy “Chicago Letter” The Critic July 29, 1893, p. 76.