Happy Christmas, Solstice, Hanukah, Kwanza, or whatever other holiday you may celebrate. In my family, there’s a run of family birthdays between the first week of November straight through Nov & Dec until my mother’s birthday on December 18th. And most years I take the day off work and we go to a museum together. This year, we went to see the Monet and Venice show currently at the Brooklyn Museum.

Now, I respect Monet, and the Impressionist movement, but if I had to pick I would pick Manet over Monet any day. I admit a lot of Monet’s work leaves me cold — I get it, but I don’t love it. I do love Venice, though, so I figured I would enjoy it regardless.

by Monet

Well, let me tell you, this show is much more than Monet. In fact, I would honestly retitle it “Young Sargent Convinces Grumpy Old Monet To Go To Venice” — it turns out that Venice was Monet’s last big art trip before he retired to his gardens and water lilies for good, but he felt Venice was too touristy & cliché to be worth visiting and painting. But Sargent, and then Monet’s wife, wouldn’t leave him alone and they chased him out of a depressive funk in France all the way to Italy, in 1908, based on Sargent’s raves about painting there.

by Sargent

by Sargent

by Sargent

Once he got there he quickly changed his tune and ordered his specially-prepared canvases from France. Then he complained Venice was “too beautiful to paint”, and then he got insecure and said “If you’re going to try your hand at something that other artists have been painting literally for 500 years … it’s got to be a little bit daunting,” but he eventually got out of his own head and got to work. In fact, he made 37 oil paintings while he was in Venice for 2 months, and this exhibit has 19 of them.

by Monet

The show has a number of paintings of the same scenes by Monet at slightly different POVs and different days and lightings. There’s notes about how he took Sargent’s advice and painted from a hired gondola — but he complained that the gondolier couldn’t keep the craft steady enough on the water for him. Honestly the unsung hero of the show was definitely Alice, who put up with a lot behind the scenes, you can tell.

There’s also a selection of non-Venice Monet works, for comparison, including two huge pieces from his water lily period.

In fact, only half the exhibit is actually Monet’s work. There’s a ton of images and artifacts of Venice in the 1800s — it’s fascinating to see how similar Venice full of 1800s tourists looks to Venice full of 2020s tourists — and then a ton of work of Venice by other masters such as Sargent, of course, but also two huge gorgeous Venetian scenes by Canaletto, and many others. Honestly, easily half the work in the show is by other artists. And it gives a rich vision of how both tourists, and artists, appreciated the city.

by Canaletto

This is a traveling exhibit, and has made a few stops already. It’s at the Brooklyn Museum until Feb 1st, and then it’s going to San Francisco next.

Here’s a good overview article by Smithsonian Magazine, another with more images by ArtNews, and you can see almost all the Monet paintings in the show on Hyperallergic. Here’s a good walkthru of the show by ArtFuse:

If you can catch this show in person, it’s well worth it. If not, then check out all the links above.

And Happy Holidays and Hope your 2026 is better than your 2025!