Impressionist insight: 1,000s letters to Monet go on sale

Impressionist insight: a thousand letters to Monet go on sale

· Collection expected to fetch £340,000 at auction
· Cézanne, Renoir and Rodin wrote to painter

Angela Doland, Associated Press in Paris
Saturday December 9, 2006
The Guardian

Pierre-Auguste Renoir wrote to his friend Claude Monet to share his joys and pains, from the birth of a child to the suffering of his final years. Auguste Rodin praised Monet's art for helping him understand light, the clouds and the sea.
More than 1,000 letters to Monet from his friends and admirers go under the hammer in Paris on Wednesday.

Many are by Monet's fellow Impressionist painters - including Renoir, Edouard Manet, Paul Cézanne, Gustave Caillebotte, Edgar Degas, Alfred Sisley and Mary Cassatt - offering an intimate glimpse into a close circle of artists.

Monet carefully preserved the letters until his death in 1926 at the age of 86, and they became a family treasure, passed down through the generations. The artist's great-grandson, Michel Cornebois, has turned them over to the Artcurial auction house, which expects the sale to bring in €500,000 (£340,000).
The collection includes previously unreleased letters, a few photographs and some jottings by Monet. Pierre Assouline, who wrote about the Impressionists in a biography of Monet's art dealer, Paul Durand-Ruel, called it "a mosaic portrait of a great artist". "For decades, we have read, analysed and dissected Monet's letters to dealers, artists, writers," Assouline says in an introduction to the collection. "At last we have the response."

The letters from Durand-Ruel show his constant support for the artist despite his financial difficulties.

In one 1885 letter, Durand-Ruel wrote with humour of his plans to go to New York to build enthusiasm for Monet's work in the US. "We have to revolutionise this country of millionaires, and try to become millionaires ourselves," he wrote. "We're not at that point yet, but everyone needs to start somewhere."

Many of the letters from Monet's fellow painters show their fascination and admiration for the work of the man at the centre of their circle. His painting Impression, Sunrise gave the movement its name. "The friendship of a great man is a gift from the gods," Cézanne wrote to Monet in 1894.

In 1897, the sculptor Rodin told Monet of his "admiration for the artist who helped me understand light, the clouds, the sea and the cathedrals".

The letters from Renoir are especially rich, showing the close bond of two artists who met in their early 20s and remained friends for a lifetime.

Renoir wrote of his children's births and illnesses, described his artistic projects and consoled Monet about the deaths of friends and family. In his final years, Renoir suffered debilitating arthritis and his handwriting was a mere faint scrawl.

Five years before he died in 1919, Renoir wrote to his old friend: "I often think of you, and as I grow older, I think of our youth. It helps me get through the present times."