O Grande Canal

Monet came to Venice only once, in the autumn of 1908, when he was 68 and already the grand old man of French painting. He and his wife were guests in a palace on the Grand Canal, and though he had resisted the trip, the light on the water caught him and he set to work, starting some 37 canvases. This is the view straight down the canal toward the domed church of Santa Maria della Salute, though Monet cared far less about the famous church than about what the water was doing beneath it. He left the paintings unfinished, carried them home, and kept reworking them in his studio in France for four more years before he was willing to show them.