Claude Monet exposition at the Grand Palais

Today we visited the Claude Monet retrospective exhibition at the Grand Palais on the Champs Elysees. The exhibition opened on 22 September and, knowing it would be busy, we booked our tickets last week. When you buy your ticket you nominate an entry time and you have half an hour from that time in which to enter the exhibition. This system seems to be used to regulate the number of visitors actually viewing the exhibition and although there were major queues outside the Grand Palais we waited only about half an hour to enter. Without tickets, the queue wait was an hour to purchase tickets for entry in three hours time.

The exhibition was busy but not crowded. There was ample space to move around and view the paintings, and to sit down in many of the rooms which were spread over a number of levels separated by short flights of stairs. We hired audioguides, which were great for anecdotal information and I found myself smiling listening to quotes from letters Monet had written to friends or things that friends had said about him and his work. In later years while living at Giverny, Monet said, "I am not good at anything but painting and gardening," and I wondered why he thought there was a need to be; a man who painted all his life and, even with severe cataracts, continued to paint his much-loved water lily garden.

Monet was a painter of "l'instantaneity", constantly striving to capture the life of the subject through the changing light at different times of the day and in changing seasons. He would sometimes have six canvasses on the go, dropping one and moving to another as the light changed. The exhibition was grouped by subject and it was wonderful to be able to see the same subject - a cliff, a hay bale, the Seine, a town - painted by Monet at different times, in different weather conditions, sometimes years apart.

We remembered some of the paintings from prior visits to the Musee d'Orsay - especially a favourite of mine, "La Pie", and I bought a postcard of this and of another painting I loved, "La Capeline rouge, portrait de Madame Monet", which shows Madame Monet (probably freezing while she posed) in the snow outside typical French windows. We've photographed these for you in the tres petite exposition above!

If you love Monet then the exhibition runs until 24 January 2011 and I'd be happy to stay on and come with you!