On March 1, after a two-year absence, Portland Art Museum’s prized Monet is going back on view.
But the Waterlilies canvas that is returning to the galleries is remarkably changed, thanks to a conservation project that has radically de-varnished its surface. The effort doesn’t just restore the work’s striking tonalities for the first time in 65 years—it returns the painting to Monet’s original vision.
“Some conservation treatments are done because something is in a poor condition structurally,” the museum’s lead conservator Charlotte Ameringer told me. “This treatment falls on the opposite side, where it’s really to do with aesthetics, or how the painting looks.”
Claude Monet, Waterlilies (1914–15) before restoration. Photo courtesy of the Portland Art Museum.
Ameringer first encountered the monumental, ca. 1914–15 painting when she joined PAM in 2022. Her initial thought? “That could look so much better.” Decades ago, the work had been slathered with a layer of acrylic resin varnish that had saturated its tones, flattening the color harmonies that Monet intended. This glossiness, she said, altered “a really integral part of what he was trying to convey with these paintings.”
What Monet hoped to capture with Waterlilies was not a faithful replica of the pond by his Giverny residence, but its aura. “For me,” he once reflected, “it is only the surrounding atmosphere which gives subjects their true value.” With loose brushstrokes and subtle shifts in hues, he created an almost illusory scene, the lightly defined lily pads seeming to levitate above the luminous reflection on the water’s surface.
Claude Monet standing in his studio with a panel of his Nympheas murals. Photo: Underwood and Underwood / Library of Congress / Corbis / VCG via Getty Images.
As with any good Impressionist, Monet was creating less a finished painting than an impression of one. To that end, he, like most Impressionists, was partial to a matte finish (to a point where he would drain his oil paints using cheesecloth for a drier consistency) and disdained varnishing as it toned down colors and interrupted the depth of field. The effect also yellowed as it aged.
“Impressionists were seeking to differentiate themselves by using paint in a really different way,” said Ameringer. “With this painting, which would be considered Monet’s late period, he was pretty adamantly against varnish, and he’s really looking for what he calls a pastel-like surface.”
Detail of partially de-varnished surface of Monet’s Waterlilies (1914–15). Photo courtesy of the Portland Art Museum.
The art world in the early 20th century, however, was not ready for such unvarnished works. The canvases appeared unfinished, their colors shockingly bright compared to those of academic paintings. Consequently, Ameringer noted, many Impressionists saw their paintings varnished, with or without their consent, “because it was the only way they could sell them.”
Over the past nine months, Ameringer has been hard at work on Waterlilies in what she called “a very straightforward treatment.” Using a bamboo skewer topped with a bulb of cotton moistened with solvent, she meticulously rolled the varnish off the surface of the painting. The synthetic varnish also has a solubility different than that of oil paint, she added—a factor she could “exploit” as she de-varnished the canvas.
Charlotte Ameringer restoring the Monet. Photo courtesy of the Portland Art Museum.
Still, even post-restoration, as Ameringer emphasized in PAM’s videos on the conservation process, the Monet will never look like a painting that has never been varnished. This, she told me, kind of has to do with “the laws of physics.”
“No matter what I do, I’m never going to get every molecule of varnish off that surface. And it’s really not safe to do so. You think of paint layers as some solid thing, but basically everything is molecules, and molecules interact with each other. You can’t ever get all of it off,” she explained.
“The other thing, which is probably even more subtle, is that it just won’t have age in the same way as something that has been unvarnished for that period of time.”
Claude Monet, Waterlilies (1914–15) after restoration. Photo courtesy of the Portland Art Museum
To the latter point, Ameringer referenced unvarnished Monet paintings, as well as Monet works that had been varnished then de-varnished from around the same time frame to capture its age. “Those unvarnished paintings from that exact same period,” she said, “were kind of my North Star.”
At “Monet’s Floating Worlds at Giverny,” the restored Monet will be accompanied by artifacts that draw out its historical context. An array of Japanese prints will highlight how ukiyo-e inspired the French artist and his fellow Impressionists (Monet avidly collected works by Japanese masters including Toyokuni and Hiroshige, which he hung in his Giverny residence), while a display will detail the research around its latest makeover.
The Monet in the conservation studio. Photo courtesy of Portland Art Museum.
For the conservator who has been up-close with Waterlilies for the better part of two years, the process has offered her a profound window into the painter’s command of his form and technique. She noted his keen awareness of his materials—”he purposely chose only pigments that he knew would age well”—and his ability to build up a variety of paint textures. Experiencing the painting this intimately, she said, has been nothing short of “immersive.”
“Every brush stroke is perfect where it is. That’s just a lot of experience and a lot of talent. He’s 73 or 74 when he’s painting Waterlilies and you can just tell he’s completely mastered his craft,” she added. “The project has given me a painter’s perspective on this, almost like what it would take to create this.”
“Monet’s Floating Worlds at Giverny: Portland’s Waterlilies Resurfaces” is on view at Portland Art Museum, 1219 SW Park Ave, Portland, Oregon, March 1–August 10.
