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Monet in the '90s: The Series Paintings

Paul Hayes Tucker

Monet in the '90s is Paul Hayes Tucker's landmark study of Claude Monet's series paintings—the grainstacks, poplars, and Rouen Cathedral façades of the 1890s in which the artist painted the same motif again and again under changing light. Published in 1989 to accompany a hugely popular exhibition (it drew more than half a million visitors to Boston), the book does more than admire these canvases as pure studies of atmosphere. Tucker, one of the leading Monet scholars, argues that the series were also bound up with their moment—with French national feeling, rural nostalgia, and Monet's own ambition to lead his country's art. The result reframes some of the most beloved paintings in the world as both sublime optical experiments and works of their time. Beautifully illustrated and clearly written, it's essential for anyone serious about Monet or Impressionism.

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The author

Paul Hayes Tucker (b. 1950) is an American art historian and one of the foremost authorities on Claude Monet, whose exhibitions and books helped reshape scholarly understanding of the painter's later career.

The book

Published in 1989 by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and Yale University Press, Monet in the '90s: The Series Paintings accompanied a touring exhibition (Boston, Chicago, and the Royal Academy in London). It focuses on the grainstacks, poplars, and Rouen Cathedral series, offering both close looking and fresh historical context.

How it reads

Scholarly but accessible. Tucker's argument—that the series respond to French politics and identity as well as to light—gives the familiar paintings new depth without diminishing their beauty.

For more context

Read alongside Tucker's Claude Monet: Life and Art and studies of the Giverny years.

Sources

Type: Book
Author / Maker: Paul Hayes Tucker
Publisher: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston / Yale University Press
Place of publication: Boston; New Haven
Year: 1989
ISBN: 0-300-04659-6
Shelf: Art
Location: Maine