If Claude Monet's Water Lilies have some of the highest prices on the Art market today, there was a time when these paintings interested almost no one. Except a Parisian art dealer, Katia Granoff. This is one of the moments that the art historian Clotilde Scordia recounts in Larock-Granoff, history of a gallery (editions Mare et Martin), which appears on the occasion of the centenary of this family business.
In the post-World War II period, a great moment for abstract art and the American avant-gardes, Impressionism in general and the last years of Monet in particular no longer inspired. “We thought it was a scribble. Monet was not up to date and he was made to appear senile”said Clotilde Scordia to AFP. The artist, who died in 1926, did not see the hanging of his Water Lilies at the Musée de l'Orangerie the following year. And twenty years later, one wonders if this idea was the right one.
The gallery owner Katia Granoff, a native of what is now Ukraine, considers Monet as “the greatest French painter of our time”. She said that she could very quietly contemplate these frescoes which today attract thousands of visitors every day. “The rooms were always deserted and the guard’s drowsiness encouraged him to dance in the room”says the art historian in her work.
Same feeling of abandonment at home in Giverny, a village in the Seine valley. After the death in 1947 of Monet's daughter-in-law, Blanche Hoschedé, the famous garden fell into disrepair. The son, Michel, the only heir, passionate about travel, wants to offload the legacy. It will be with Katia Granoff, one of the rare women in the art dealer community. “Michel Monet had a rather difficult personality, he distrusted institutions. But when he met her in 1950, respect and friendship were created. He trusts her and she can acquire the Giverny workshop funds”explains Clotilde Scordia.
There are Water Lilies inside, reputed to be unsaleable. The gallery owner, who launched into the sale of art upon her arrival in Paris at the age of 29 in 1924, found buyers. Mainly Americans.
“She was boarding in Switzerland, she is multilingual, very curious and open. She always had to fend for herself. His instinct tells him that the public will inevitably rediscover Monet, that it is only a matter of years. She can’t sell off the Water Lilies”according to the art historian. Gallery records show that some clients had to give up. Too expensive for them.
Among those who won the prize was Alfred Barr, first director of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. “I am not responsible for the fact that people were blind before you, dear Mr. Barr. Take Monet’s latest paintings to America and show them in your great Museum”writes Katia Granoff to him.
A fire in New York in 1958 destroyed one of the paintings, “The Clouds”. He will return to Paris to buy three more. And Katia Granoff will give him one more painting as a gift. Not only, she writes, because Barr was “the first to understand the importance of Monet’s last period”but also out of recognition for “the American army” after the Liberation.
Monet is one of the most expensive artists in the world today. Eighteen paintings from his Water Lilies series have already exceeded $30 million at auction. At Christie's New York in November 2023, “Le Bassin aux nymphéas” (1917-1919) reached $74 million.
