SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA – When you think of Claude Monet, you probably instinctively picture water lilies and beautiful bridges.
The Monet exhibit currently at the de Young Museum in San Francisco includes plenty of those things. But it also showcases a dramatically different chapter of Monet’s career and life: his time in Venice.
“Monet and Venice” was co-organized with the Brooklyn Museum, where it was shown before making its way to San Francisco. The exhibition focuses on the artist’s time in the Italian city, presenting it as a story of creative inspiration, late-career renewal, and artistic revival. I stopped by to check it out for Bay Area Telegraph.
The exhibition is set up across multiple galleries and unfolds as a fairly linear narrative as you walk from room to room.
As you first enter, historical photographs and early films of Venice help set the scene. Remarkably, the Lumiere brothers — among the earliest pioneers of moving pictures — were filming Venice around the same era that Monet visited the city in the early 20th century.
Their films of the city, some of the earliest moving images ever produced, are projected on a massive wall in the exhibition. They make the Venice that Monet visited feel startlingly alive.
As you proceed into the exhibit hall, you are first greeted by a series of paintings demonstrating Monet’s longtime fascination with water. The artist’s classic subjects — bridges, rivers, harbors, and watery landscapes — are well represented.
You then move into a section showing earlier depictions of Venice.
Artists had been painting the city for hundreds of years, and works by other artists — including major painters such as Canaletto, J.M.W. Turner, John Singer Sargent, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, James McNeill Whistler, and Paul Signac — give a broad sense of how Venice was traditionally portrayed in art.
I especially enjoyed seeing the highly realistic paintings, which almost look like photographs. They set the scene perfectly for the transition to Monet’s own time in Venice.
Seeing how the city was often depicted before Monet arrived helps a modern audience understand how jarring and exciting his own Impressionist paintings of Venice’s canals and buildings must have seemed at the time, and how innovative.
With that groundwork laid, you then proceed into a large gallery featuring numerous works from Monet’s time in the city. Monet only spent about two months in Venice. He visited with his second wife, Alice, late in his career, at a time when his artistic energy was flagging and he was beginning to doubt himself.
He initially planned to spend about two weeks in the city, but ended up staying far longer.
He left creatively energized and ready to return home to France and begin painting more regularly, and to tackle his core subject–his garden and pond–with new vigor.
A series of images of palaces could not possibly be more different from the literal depictions by earlier painters.
Monet does not so much paint the palaces of Venice as the water, light, and atmosphere around them. After walking through a gallery focused on Monet’s earlier water paintings, his approach suddenly makes much more sense.
In the gallery, you will also find Monet’s depictions of Venice’s iconic gondolas, as well as buildings and architecture he saw in the city and found especially striking.
Tragically, Monet’s wife died shortly after their trip. He finished many of the Venice paintings while deep in grief. Painting them was apparently a cathartic process for him, and that adds another level of emotion to what you see on the walls.
After his time in Venice, Monet returned to his home in France and continued working on the water lilies, arguably some of the most influential artworks of the 20th century.
The exhibition argues convincingly that, given his flagging confidence, Monet may never have continued to be as productive if he had not visited Venice.
The final gallery celebrates those later works and Monet’s legacy.
Overall, visiting the exhibit gives a strong impression of this pivotal moment in the famous artist’s life.
But it also becomes a broader exploration of creative renewal and the power of travel and lived experience to inspire an artist.
For a city obsessed with its own creativity, there are surely lessons to pull from here. Even for those, like myself, who are not as knowledgeable about art history, seeing the progression of Monet’s depictions of water visually represented on the walls makes the artist’s creative journey much more accessible.
“Monet and Venice” is on view at the de Young Museum in San Francisco through July 26, 2026.
