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The Monet Lisa

Monet, Claude (b. Nov. 14, 1840, Paris, Fr.--d. Dec. 5, 1926, Giverny) French painter, initiator, leader, and unswerving advocate of the Impressionist style. [Encyclopedia Britannica, 1994]

This month's feature artist is Claude Monet. He is dead now, but when he was alive he painted all kinds of things. He is well known for his series paintings of poplar trees and grain stacks in the French countryside. He would paint these things at different times of day and in different weather conditions to catch the subtle lighting, color, and shadow variations. These paintings are all well-known, but perhaps his most famous painting is not a landscape. It was a dramatic change of style for Monet, an artist who liked to use pastel colors and paint nature. His most famous painting is a portrait of a mysterious woman with no eyebrows.

This painting is very dark and uses a color scheme that can not be found in any of Monet's other paintings. Much controversy has occurred as a result of this painting. Various officials hypothesize that the woman in the painting was either Monet's lover, sister, or a rich woman who wanted to have her portrait painted, so she commissioned Monet to paint her.

Aside from that controversy, there are two other questions about the painting that remain unanswered.

1. Why is the woman in the painting smiling so sadly? Some officials claim that she is mourning a recently deceased husband, others claim that it is because she was secretly in love with Monet and he did not return her love, and yet others claim that she did not smile that way on purpose — she simply got tired of sitting there waiting for Monet to finish her painting and her smile drooped. [Editor's Note: I think that most people have had the same kind of experience. You know… when someone takes forever getting his or her camera ready to take a photo, they mess with the flash, and fiddle with the focus, and "oops!" the lens cap was on… your smile starts to look fake and sad.] A revolutionary new theory suggests that the woman peeked while Monet was painting and saw that he had painted her without eyebrows, which made her sad and upset because in real life she had very nice eyebrows and was very proud of them.

2. Why doesn't the woman have any eyebrows? Did Monet paint her that way on purpose, or did he forget? Did the woman lose them to unnatural causes. or was she (contrary to the theory proposed at the end of Question 1.) born without them? Perhaps he painted them and then changed his mind and painted over them, as he did with the pearl necklace that was recently discovered by X-raying the painting. We will probably never know…

Unless more discoveries and insights occur, these questions will remain unanswered, haunting art critics and eyebrow-lovers for eternity. We salute Monet and his most intriguing painting: The Monet Lisa.

[above] Other paintings by Monet