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| Boulevard des Capucines by Claude Monet |
In 1974, Nadar, a close friend of the great Impressionist Claude Monet, held the first ever Impressionist exhibition. One of the most notable works to be included in that show was a Monet painting that featured his impressions of a view from Nadar’s window. However, Monet actually painted two different paintings of Boulevard des Capucines, and many people are unsure which one was presented at that first exhibition. Currently those paintings reside in the Pushkin Museum in Moscow and the Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas City. Recently, some experts have begun to present evidence claiming that the Moscow painting was the one included in the exhibition.
Two of the key pieces of evidence are a set of reviews done on that exhibition. The first review was penned by Ernest Chesnaux in the Paris Journal on May 7, 1874. He described the paintings depiction of crowds, carriages, trees, and the use of shadow and light. He claims, however, that when one approaches the painting, these large objects fade into the background and the painting becomes simply an “indecipherable chaos” of scrapings from Monet’s palette. The second and far more sarcastic review was written by Louis Leroy and published in Le Charivari. He mocked the so-called brilliance of the piece. He said that Monet’s people looked like black tongue-lickings, and he said the work was done in a “slap-dash, any old way”.
When looking at the Chesnaux review, many contemporary critics claim that it could easily be applied to either painting. The boulevard in the painting in Kansas is under snow, however, and that snow would be inconsistent with many of Chesnaux’s descriptions of dust and light. The dust would have been subdued by the snow. The painting in Moscow, on the other hand, sports autumnal looking trees but with a sky that is crisp and wintry. This painting is much easier to match with the critic’s description of shadows and light.
The seemingly insignificant parts of the reviews where the critics referred to Monet’s black tongue lickings and slap dash methods are actually very relevant. When one looks at the Kansas painting, they will notice how fluid the painting appears. When they look at the Moscow painting, on the other hand, they will note the savagery that has been applied to the brush strokes. The fact that the Kansas painting is done in a manner that looks so easy has been used to suggest that this painting was actually a Monet re-do of his first attempt. Without dates, it is impossible to ascertain this fact for sure. However, it is a likely assumption.
The two works contain other small differences. The Kansas painting features a larger foreground while the Moscow painting has a more truncated background. The Kansas painting also has more Japanese influences. This fact along with some other notable differences makes it plausible to consider this one as the newer of the two works. Careful analysis of these two works in comparison to these reviews as well as analysis of the works themselves has lead critics to assume that the Moscow work was painted first. As the first painting it was most likely to have been the one that premiered at Nadar’s original Impressionist exhibition.
