Monet at the Met: Claude Monet in the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Monet at the Met means one of the great Monet collections outside France: the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York holds about forty paintings by Claude Monet, spanning his whole career from Garden at Sainte-Adresse (1867) and La Grenouillère (1869) to the Haystacks, Rouen Cathedral, the Japanese footbridge and late water lilies. Most of them hang together in the nineteenth-century European paintings galleries on the second floor of The Met Fifth Avenue.

The collection is the work of New York collectors who bought Monet when Paris still hesitated, above all Louisine and Henry Osborne Havemeyer, and later Walter and Leonore Annenberg. This guide picks out the essential pictures, explains how they came to the museum and gives practical notes for a visit.

How New York collected Monet

Monet's American market was built by his dealer Paul Durand-Ruel, who took a large exhibition of Impressionist paintings to New York in 1886 and opened a gallery there soon after. American buyers proved more willing than French ones, and by the 1890s Monet was a fixture in the collections of New York, Boston and Chicago.

The Met's Monets came mainly by gift. The most important single source is the 1929 bequest of Louisine Havemeyer, who with her husband Henry, the sugar refiner, had assembled one of the finest collections of modern French painting anywhere, guided by their friend Mary Cassatt. The Havemeyer gift includes La Grenouillère, The Green Wave, Bridge over a Pond of Water Lilies, The Four Trees, a Haystack in snow and sun, Ice Floes and Bouquet of Sunflowers.

Other bequests followed through the twentieth century. In 1967 the museum bought Garden at Sainte-Adresse at auction in London for a record price. And the Walter H. and Leonore Annenberg Collection, promised in 1991, added Camille Monet on a Garden Bench, Poppy Fields near Argenteuil, The Path through the Irises and a late Water Lilies.

What to see first

Garden at Sainte-Adresse (1867). Monet's family on a terrace above the Channel at Sainte-Adresse, near Le Havre: his father in a panama hat, two flagpoles snapping in the wind, red gladioli and nasturtiums, steamships and sailboats on a band of blue sea. The high viewpoint and flat, stacked bands of terrace, sea and sky come from Japanese prints; Monet himself called it his Chinese painting with flags. It is the best-known Monet in New York.

La Grenouillère (1869). The bathing place on the Seine near Bougival, painted side by side with Renoir in the summer of 1869. The water, broken into thick horizontal strokes of blue, black and white, is where many historians locate the birth of Impressionist technique. A companion is in the National Gallery, London.

Bridge over a Pond of Water Lilies (1899). The Japanese footbridge at Giverny, seen square-on, arching over a pond almost entirely covered by lily pads, with willows and reeds closing the view at the top. It belongs to the first group of footbridge pictures; see the Japanese Footbridge series.

The Four Trees (1891). From the Poplars series, four trunks rising straight out of the frame, their reflections and the line of the riverbank forming a grid. It is one of the most nearly abstract pictures Monet made in the 1890s; see Poplars.

The series. Next to the poplars hang a Haystack (Effect of Snow and Sun, 1891) and a Rouen Cathedral (The Portal, Sunlight, 1894), so the three great series of the 1890s can be compared in a few steps.

Water lilies. Water Lilies (1919) from the Annenberg Collection and a second Water Lilies of 1916–19 show the late, close-up view of the pond without a horizon. Seen after Bridge over a Pond of Water Lilies, they show in twenty years how the bridge, the banks and finally the sky dropped out of Monet's view, leaving only the surface of the water.

The rest of the collection

Around these highlights is a remarkably complete career. From the 1860s: Regatta at Sainte-Adresse (1867), The Green Wave, The Bodmer Oak, Fontainebleau Forest (1865). From the 1870s: Camille Monet on a Garden Bench (1873), Jean Monet on His Horse Tricycle (1872), two views of the Parc Monceau in Paris (1876 and 1878), and the Dutch Houses on the Achterzaan (1871) in the Robert Lehman Collection. From Vétheuil: View of Vétheuil, Vétheuil in Summer, Île aux Fleurs and Bouquet of Sunflowers.

From the coast: two views of the Manneporte at Étretat, the great rock arch, painted in 1883 and 1886, and Cabin of the Customs Watch (1882). From the Riviera: Palm Trees at Bordighera and The Valley of the Nervia (1884). From the later years: Ice Floes (1893), Morning on the Seine near Giverny (1897), The Houses of Parliament (Effect of Fog) (1903–4) and The Palazzo Ducale Seen from San Giorgio Maggiore (1908).

Where the Monets hang

At the time of writing, the Met's online collection lists most of its Monet paintings in Galleries 818 and 819, part of the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century European paintings galleries on the second floor. The Annenberg Monets, including Camille Monet on a Garden Bench, Poppy Fields near Argenteuil and the late Water Lilies and Path through the Irises, are listed in Galleries 821 and 822, and Houses on the Achterzaan in the Robert Lehman Wing (Gallery 957). Several pictures, among them Regatta at Sainte-Adresse, Palm Trees at Bordighera, The Houses of Parliament and the Venice canvas, were not listed as on view. Displays rotate and works travel, so check each painting's page on metmuseum.org before a visit.

Practical notes

• Where: The Met Fifth Avenue, 1000 Fifth Avenue at 82nd Street, on the edge of Central Park, New York.
• Opening times (from the museum's website): Sunday to Tuesday and Thursday, 10 am to 5 pm; Friday and Saturday, 10 am to 9 pm. Closed on Wednesdays, and on Thanksgiving, 25 December, 1 January and the first Monday in May. Check the website before visiting.
• Route: from the Great Hall, take the main staircase to the second floor and head for the European paintings galleries; the Monets are among the nineteenth-century rooms, near Manet, Degas, Renoir and Van Gogh.
• Time: an hour is enough for the Monets and their neighbors; the Impressionist rooms are busiest on weekend afternoons.

Monet beyond the Met in New York

The Museum of Modern Art, a short ride downtown, has one of the great late Water Lilies triptych panels and a late Japanese Footbridge, so a day can cover Monet from 1865 to the 1920s. For other museums, including Boston and Chicago, see where to see Monet's paintings.