I can't believe it's Monet's work... The Water Lilies, which he painted in despair in his later years, after three operations for cataracts, saying he no longer had the eyes of an artist.
You should know the story behind "Water Lilies" if you go to the "Monet exhibition".
Around 1.67 million cataract operations are performed in Japan every year. It also has a long history. Eye surgeon Hideharu Fukasaku says: "The impressionist painter Monet, who died about 100 years ago at 86, also had cataracts. The famous series of water lilies have different colours depending on the unique way people with cataracts see.
1)
Changes in the vision of the cataract patient Monet in the painting "Water Lilies".
Let's look at it from an unexpected perspective to learn more about seeing and what cataracts are. When we think about the act of 'seeing', it is easy to understand the works of a famous painter and the influence that changes in the eyes have on the results.
You've probably heard of Monet, the French painter famous for his water lily paintings. In Japan, you can see Monet's "Water Lilies" paintings at the National Museum of Western Art in Ueno and at museums nationwide. In 2024, there will be several Monet exhibitions where you can see 'Water Lilies'.
Of course, if you go abroad, the Musée de l'Orangerie in Paris has two large rooms called the "Water Lily Room", shaped like an oval and surrounded by masterpieces of water lilies. A sense of emotion surrounds the series of water lily paintings.
Even in the MoMA Museum of Modern Art, the temple of modern painting, "Monet's Water Lilies" is the most popular. Take a look at this Monet water lily painting.
2)
The beautiful "Pond of Water Lilies" was created by Monet, who admired Japanese culture.
Monet's house in Giverny is north of Paris, and I visited there three times, where I painted an oil painting of a water lily pond. [Frontispiece 1] is an actual landscape photograph I took.
3)
Monet, who admired the beauty of Japan through ukiyo-e prints, was fascinated by this Japanese garden and the water lilies, so he ordered water lilies to be cultivated in the water garden he created at Giverny, and built a drum bridge in the Japanese style. ... Monet painted this pond of water lilies for many years as his life's work.
[Frontispiece 2] is Monet's "Water Lily Pond", exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago, and is a work from 1900. Around 1898, Monet created a pond by drawing water into the garden of his home in the village of Giverny and began painting a series of water lilies. In 1900, "The Pond of Water Lilies" was exhibited at the Durand-Ruel Gallery and gradually became popular.
Painted when Monet was at the ripe old age of 60, it is full of bright light and colour, with the characteristic use of Impressionist colours. In particular, it is filled with vibrant greens and blues - bright, highly saturated colours with exciting interplays of light and shadow, such as water lilies, drum bridges, trees and reflections in water.
These are the natural landscapes that Monet had practised since his youth, painting amid nature and depicting it ``as he sees it'' through his own eyes and brain. This is the brocade pattern created by the colours of Impressionism, which was an innovative painting technique at the time.
4)
At 82, Monet's cataracts worsened, and he painted with muddy colours.
On the other hand, let's look at [Frontispiece 3]. This is a painting from Monet's later years. It was painted in 1922 when Monet was 82 years old. It shows the same water lily pond and drum bridge in the pond of his house in Giverny.
5)
Let's compare this painting with [Frontispiece 2], which he painted in 1900 when he was 60. The vividness of the green and blue has disappeared from the colour and become brown. The outline of the form has collapsed, and the shape of the Japanese Taiko bridge has become vague. It isn't easy to understand that Monet, the same artist, painted the same place.
According to many critics, the death of his wife Alice and later the end of his eldest son Jean led him to paint this way, leading to the later Fauvism. It is said to be the beginning of abstract painting (a style of painting that was said to be animalistic in that it used colours that felt) and abstract painting.
Indeed, I can understand the desire to say that broken forms and colours that are far from unique are the seeds of Fauvism and abstract painting, and it also seems that they are related. Some people might even mistake this painting for one by Van Gogh.
6)
The eye's crystalline lens changes from a clear to a yellow-brown lens.
I'm afraid that's not right. As an ophthalmic surgeon, I have performed about 250,000 operations, mainly cataract operations, and observed patients' vision before and after the procedure. As a professional painter, I also carefully watch how they look. Based on this experience, I can say with certainty that the changes in colour and form in Monet's paintings are "typical changes in vision characteristic of cataract patients".
The eye structure is similar to a camera (Table 1). A lens called the crystalline lens is equivalent to a camera lens.
7)
In cataract patients, the structure of the lens changes. As we age, the lens changes from a nearly transparent lens when we are young to a yellow-brown lens.
This reduces overall light transmission and makes the whole image appear dimmer. In addition, pale colours such as pink become invisible, and the boundaries of objects become less clear. Also, as the amount of transmitted light decreases, the image appears cloudy and dark, and your visual acuity deteriorates.
In addition, short wavelengths of light, such as yellow and orange, which are the colours of the cataractous lens, and their complementary colours, such as blue, violet and dark green, are absorbed by the yellowish-brown cataractous lens. Therefore, light from blue, purple or dark green objects is absorbed and indistinguishable from black things.
8)
As the condition progresses, blue and purple appear black, making it challenging to identify the correct colour.
For example, blue and black socks appear black to cataract patients, a common phenomenon. Also, fancy purple shirts and trousers look like black shirts and trousers. Dark green also appears blackish.
Have you noticed this? The gorgeous blues, greens and purples are typical of Impressionism used in Frontispiece 2, painted when Monet was 60, and become dark brown in Frontispiece 3, a painting from his later years when Monet was 82. It's beginning to feel vague. The changes in Monet's paintings are exactly the changes in the way a cataract patient sees.
9)
Monet's eyes developed cataracts around 1904. During his trip to Venice, Italy, in 1908, he was working on a painting and lamented his poor eyesight and inability to use colour properly. Cataracts cause the transparent lens to turn yellowish-brown, so it's like looking through yellowish-brown glass. Monet's dissatisfaction with his work led him to destroy many of his oil paintings because he couldn't capture his colours.
A review of Monet's eye records shows that a local ophthalmologist diagnosed him with cataracts in both eyes in 1912. Since then, he has consulted many of the most prominent ophthalmologists of the day. Surgery was recommended, but as the technology for cataract surgery was poor at the time, the risk of losing sight was high, and Monet was afraid of surgery and refused.
10)
Cataract surgery used to be dangerous, even in Japan.
Cataract surgery in Monet's time was very different from modern eye surgery and was even dangerous. But even in modern times, it is true that Japan has always lagged behind the rest of the world in eye surgery.
This is my own experience. It was just over 30 years ago when I was young and had just returned from America. I was the first in Japan to perform phacoemulsification and intraocular lens implantation, which is common in the United States in many cases. I was surprised that almost all my patients achieved a visual acuity of 1.0 or better, earning me a good reputation. However, at that time, many people in Japanese university hospitals thought that intraocular lenses were dangerous and did not understand phacoemulsification.
11)
Thirty years ago, a procedure similar to that used in Monet's time was performed in Japan.
In other words, in Japan at that time, the surgical method was similar to that used in Monet's time, and it was considered a success if the patient wore glasses with thick convex lenses after the operation and had a visual acuity of 0.1 or better. In most centres, patients did not have intraocular lenses but wore glasses with convex lenses after the process, so things looked bigger and colours looked different.
Then, as Monet complained, he could see different colours and sizes, and his vision was poor. So, the surgery was done after he had almost lost his sight, and the results were poor, reminiscent of eye surgery in Monet's time.
12)
In a letter written in 1918, when Monet's cataracts had progressed, Monet expressed his anguish: "I can't see colours any more, and reds only look like earth tones." I can't see pink or neutral colours at all. Blues, purples and dark greens look like black. I write it down. Monet explained that the changes in his paintings in his later years were due to the effects of cataracts.
Monet had become a famous artist with many admirers and fans. Furthermore, in 1920, his friend Clemenceau, the French Prime Minister, decided to decorate the Musée de l'Orangerie with Monet's masterpiece Water Lilies as a national project.
13)
When Monet was informed of this in a letter in 1922, he refused Clemenceau's offer, saying: "I am now blind."
However, with Clemenceau's encouragement, it was not until 1923 that he underwent cataract surgery on his right eye by a Parisian ophthalmologist, Dr Coutera, to be able to paint again.
14)
"I no longer have the eyes of a painter'' after old-fashioned cataract surgery.
At that time, cataract surgery was an old-fashioned extracapsular procedure. First, we cut open the capsule surrounding his eye's lens with a long scalpel called a Grefe knife and washed away the cataract (cloudy lens). After a while, the rest of the cataract is washed away, and the fibrous capsule is cut away.
Monet also underwent this procedure three times in six months. As a result, his corrected vision in his right eye with a convex lens was about 0.4. However, artificial lenses (intraocular lenses) were not available in the past, so patients had to wear thick glasses with convex lenses after the operation.
15)
For this reason, Monet complained and was disappointed with his eyes after the operation, saying, "Things appeared greatly enlarged and distorted, and his sense of colour was completely different, and he no longer had the eyes of an artist." This was inevitable due to the skills of the eye surgeons of the time.
However, with modern surgery, at least my surgery, it is entirely painless, and you can immediately achieve a visual acuity of 1.0 or better. Many of my surgical patients opt for multifocal lens implantation to see seamlessly at near, intermediate and far distances with the naked eye.
16)
He overcame revision surgery to create a masterpiece for the Musée de l'Orangerie.
Although the operations of the time presented problems not comparable to today's, Monet gradually became accustomed to them by wearing glasses and practising how to see. He built a sizeable steel-framed glass studio in his house at Giverny, where he finished the water lilies he had painted by the pond at Giverny. He practised his eyesight and changed his glasses for better ones as he worked.
Looking at [Frontispiece 4], you'll see it's interesting. The area where I drew before the cataract operation (upper left half) is still brownish-brown, but after the process, I can see pink, blue, purple and green again, and I drew many colours in the lower half. You can notice the difference in colour between the area you drew when you had cataracts and the area you drew after surgery in one picture.
17)
In this way, with Clemenceau's encouragement, he worked on a large painting of water lilies. Monet continued to perform until his death in December 1926 at 86.
This masterpiece of water lilies was given to the Musée de l'Orangerie in Paris the following year. There are two sizeable oval water lily rooms, which I have already described.
The room's walls, except for the door, are covered with the pond of Giverny and water lilies painted on large 2-metre square canvases. The viewer feels as if the water lily pond at Giverny surrounds him.
This painting is now a national treasure.
I can't believe it's Monet's work... The Water Lilies, which he painted in despair in his later years, after three operations for cataracts, saying he no longer had the eyes of an artist.
You should know the story behind "Water Lilies" if you go to the "Monet exhibition".
https://president.jp/articles/-/78464
