Source: Monet’s Poplars

 

Monet’s Poplars series 

Apparently, Monet was at work on three different groups of the same trees (in the end, there were 23 paintings in all) each group with its own compositional format, when he learned the trees were going to be cut down. So, he did what any self-respecting art god would do – he bought them.

Monet made most of the Poplars paintings in the summer and fall of 1891. He saw them while rowing toward the “floating studio” he kept moored further up river. They stood single file along an “s-curve” in the river, and you just have to look at the paintings to see why he fell hard for them. 

The trees, which belonged to the commune of Limetz, were indeed auctioned off for lumber. Monet therefore was forced into buying the trees to keep them standing long enough to finish painting them. Once he’d completed the series, he sold the trees back to the lumber merchant who wanted them.

Thus the world still has that graceful, elliptical geometry of light, leaf, breeze and branch, and we have one very focused and very successful never-say-die painter to thank for it.