Claude Monet | Legacy

Speaking of Monet's body of work, Wildenstein said that it is "so extensive that its very ambition and diversity challenges our understanding of its importance".

His paintings produced at Giverny and under the influence of cataracts have been said to create a link between Impressionism and twentieth-century art and modern abstract art, respectively.

His later works were a "major" inspiration to Objective abstraction.

Ellsworth Kelly, following a formative experience at Giverny, paid homage to Monet's works created there with Tableau Vert (1952).

Monet has been called an "intermediary" between tradition and modernism - his work has been examined in relation to postmodernism-and was an influence to Bazille, Sisley, Renoir and Pissarro.

Monet is now the most famous of the Impressionists; as a result of his contributions to the movement, he "exerted a huge influence on late 19th-century art".

In May 1927, 27 panel paintings were displayed in the Musée de l'Orangerie, following lengthy negotiations with the French government.

Due to his later works being ignored by artists, art historians, critics and the public few attended the showing.

In the 1950s, Monet's later works were "rediscovered" by the Abstract Expressionists, and those adjacent like Clement Greenberg, who used a similar canvases and held a disinterest in the blunt and ideological art of the war.

A 1952 essay by André Masson helped change the perception of the paintings and inspire appreciation that begin to take shape in 1956-1957.

The next year, a fire in the Museum of Modern Art would see the Water Lilies paintings acquired by them burn.

The large scale nature of Monet's later paintings proved to be difficult for some museums, which resulted in them altering the framing.

In 1978, Monet's garden in Giverny - which had grown decrepit over fifty years - was restored and opened to the public.

In 2004, London, the Parliament, Effects of Sun in the Fog (Londres, le Parlement, trouée de soleil dans le brouillard; 1904), sold for US$20.1 million.

In 2006, the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society published a paper providing evidence that these were painted in situ at St Thomas' Hospital over the river Thames.

In 1981, Ronald Pickvance noted that Monet's works after 1880 were increasingly receiving scholarly attention.

Falaises près de Dieppe (Cliffs Near Dieppe) has been stolen on two occasions: once in 1998 (in which the museum's curator was convicted of the theft and jailed for five years and two months along with two accomplices) and most recently in August 2007. It was recovered in June 2008.

Monet's Le Pont du chemin de fer à Argenteuil, an 1873 painting of a railway bridge spanning the Seine near Paris, was bought by an anonymous telephone bidder for a record $41.4 million at Christie's auction in New York on 6 May 2008.

The previous record for his painting stood at $36.5 million.

A few weeks later, Le bassin aux nymphéas (from the water lilies series) sold at Christie's 24 June 2008 auction in London for £40,921,250 ($80,451,178), nearly doubling the record for the artist.

This purchase represented one of the top 20 highest prices paid for a painting at the time.

In October 2013, Monet's paintings, L'Eglise de Vétheuil and Le Bassin aux Nympheas, became subjects of a legal case in New York against NY-based Vilma Bautista, one-time aide to Imelda Marcos, wife of dictator Ferdinand Marcos, after she sold Le Bassin aux Nympheas for $32 million to a Swiss buyer.

The said Monet paintings, along with two others, were acquired by Imelda during her husband's presidency and allegedly bought using the nation's funds. Bautista's lawyer claimed that the aide sold the painting for Imelda but did not have a chance to give her the money.

The Philippine government seeks the return of the painting.

Le Bassin aux Nympheas, also known as Japanese Footbridge over the Water-Lily Pond at Giverny, is part of Monet's famed Water Lilies series. | Source: © Wikipedia