Der Rio della Salute

Monet reached Venice at the end of September 1908 meaning to stay two weeks, and stayed until December. He was 68 and had not wanted to come at all. His wife Alice had pushed for the trip, and they were put up first in a palazzo on the Grand Canal, then at the Hotel Britannia. He worked to a timetable, each motif at its own hour of the day, and this narrow waterway beside the church of Santa Maria della Salute was one he came back to more than once. It turned out to be the last painting journey he ever made. The canvases went home unfinished, he worked at them in Giverny for the next three years, and when 29 of the Venice pictures were shown in Paris in the spring of 1912, Alice had been dead a year. He kept saying he would go back to Venice.