Beloved by Americans, Impressionist master Claude Monet has long been a victim of a sort of Gallic snobbishness in his native France. A new exhibition at Paris' Galleries Nationales attempts to right this historic wrong by bringing together nearly 200 pieces by the painter – from blockbuster chefs d'oeuvre reproduced in books, magazines and postcards worldwide to little-known, privately held pieces you'd never guess were Monets. Curator Guy Cogeval said “Claude Monet (1840-1926)”– the most complete Monet exhibit in France since 1980, with paintings on loan from dozens of museums and collections from Cleveland, Ohio, to Canberra, Australia – is a bid to “repatriate one of the great geniuses of French art.” “We (the French) have always said, ‘Monet's for an exhibit in Japan, an exhibit in the United States, but not for one in France.' But why? He's one of our greatest painters,” Cogeval told The Associated Press. He chalked this reticence up to “snobbishness,” saying the French largely dismissed Impressionism as “something for tourists” and preferred other 19th century movements like Realism or Symbolism. This Gallic apathy “has had disastrous consequences” on the French public's appreciation of Monet, Cogeval said, adding that the lion's share of recent scholarship on the painter was done by academics in the US and Britain. “I think the French public will be very surprised” by the show, said Cogeval, who also heads Paris' Musee d'Orsay, a museum dedicated largely to the Impressionists.
