Turns out that a  new Monet exhibit shows the Impressionist painter was also a master of drawing — and of managing his own public relations, according to The Boston Globe.

“…Monet’s self-promotion doesn’t lessen his talents as a painter, but it does cast his pictures in a slightly harsher light. One notices, for example, that a predilection for popularity might have kept him from more difficult subject matter. Degas drew prostitutes and Manet painted firing squads, but the tourist buses float past all that to park outside the gardens of Giverny.”

“…The Clark exhibit and its accompanying catalog seek to debunk one aspect of the Monet mythology: that Monet, known for his bright landscape paintings, didn’t really draw. But in the process they also reveal another Monet, a man who was acutely sensitive to the newly emerging power of the press, which he carefully used to further his career. In this, Monet turns out to have been surprisingly prescient, granting interviews, sanctioning reproductions of his images, and encouraging essays from sympathetic writers to presumptively frame the debate around his work. So while the “unknown Monet” of the curators’ title ostensibly refers to Monet the capable draftsman, it is Monet the mercenary publicist who emerges as the more intriguing character.

To me, the article shows that Monet to be somewhat different, in some ways, than the way he’s imagined to be, by people who never knew the artist.   It also shows that the most successful artists of this century and last, knew how to use and, to a certain extent, manipulate mass media.

I got this tip about Monet from Valeria Maltoni.