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Claude Monet, Regatta at Sainte-Adresse, 1867; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.   Look at the beautiful, naturalistic tones of this famous Monet painting. Billowy clouds, subtly variegated sea colors revealing the changing ocean depths, the shadows on the sand, and so on. The harshly altered reproduction below has turned everything a bit green, removed a lot of the detail, and added blotches where there should be greater substance and more clearly defined features. There's no need for it, either — an excellent photo is quickly available at the museum's site, and there are other accurate photos online in various locations. The photo of the painting on display was taken by a museum visitor in 2010. The Met also offers some background and insight into Monet's intentions with this painting: Monet spent the summer of 1867 at Sainte-Adresse, a well-to-do suburb of Le Havre on the Normandy Coast. On June 25, he reported that he had about twenty pictures under way, noting, 'Among the seascapes I am doing the regattas of Le Havre with many figures on the beach and the outer harbor covered with small sails.' This sunny regatta, watched at high tide by well-dressed bourgeois, seems to have been conceived as a pair with The Beach at Sainte-Adresse (Art Institute of Chicago), an overcast scene at low tide, showing fishing boats hauled onto the beach, peopled with sailors and workers.  Altered version of a painting by Claude Monet.
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Claude Monet, Water Lilies and Agapanthus (Nymphéas et agapanthes), c.1914-17; Musée Marmottan Monet.   The magnificent, watery blues and greens of this beautiful Monet painting have turned purple in the modern reproduction shown below. The original hues can be seen clearly in the first photo above, which comes from a 2012 Monet exhibition at the Sakip Sabanci Müesi, Istanbul. The second image is a page from a book about the Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris, where the painting is located. Although the contemporary version has made an attempt to mimic the brushwork and overall appearance of the original, the changes in color seem completely random, and reduce the natural, watery effect that is so typical of Monet's water lily paintings.  Altered version of a painting by Claude Monet.  Copywriting & Consultations
Claude Monet, Bouquet of Sunflowers, 1881; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.  There are many different versions of Monet's Sunflowers in circulation, but the reproduction below is one of the most extreme. Excessive contrast obscures most of the detail — the leaves have become blobs of black in places — and there are seemingly random color changes throughout. This is a case where an accurate photo is easily available: a quick search on the general phrase "Sunflowers Monet" yields the Met's listing at or near the top. The museum adds the following note: Van Gogh wrote, "Gauguin was telling me the other day that he's seen a painting by Claude Monet of sunflowers in a large Japanese vase, very fine. But — he likes mine better. I'm not of that opinion."  Altered version of a painting by Claude Monet.  THE ART DETECTIVE Bloopers, Fakes & Mistakes
Claude Monet, Antibes Seen From La Salis, 1888; Toledo Museum of Art.  The original Monet painting, shown above in a photo from the Toledo Museum of Art, is spectacular, with Monet's signature blues, and plays of light that were so difficult for him at the time: "I'm wrestling with the sun. And what a sun it is!" According to the museum, "His efforts to express the light and color of the Mediterranean fulfilled a promise to his companion, Alice Hoschedé, that what he would paint in Antibes would be 'sweetness itself, white, pink, blue, all of it enveloped in this fairy-tale-like air.'" Clearly, the dark and yellowish reproduction below doesn't come close to achieving these effects. And Monet's words help to confirm the relative accuracy of the museum's photo.  Modern artwork based on a painting by Claude Monet.  Copywriting & Consultations
Claude Monet, The Bridge at Bougival," 1869; Currier Museum of Art.   It's always a shame when a beautiful work of art is randomly altered, but in this case it's particularly unfortunate, since Bridge at Bougival is one of Monet's most significant paintings. An article in the Concord Monitor about the painting's return to the Currier after a year on tour, passes along information from Andrew Spahr, the museum's director of collections and exhibitions: The true importance of [the painting] has only been revealed in the last several decades [...] Scholars now recognize [it] as a turning point in Monet's early career, in which he begins to form a new style that would transform not only his working method, but the whole of western art. The article goes on to say that art historian and Monet expert Paul Hayes Tucker, "calls the painting 'one of the great pictures,' and a real mark of Monet's achievement at that moment." The purple version below is probably an altered photo of a modern reproduction. Why change the colors or tamper with the overall look of the painting? A good photo of the original is easily accessible at the museum's website.  Altered version of a painting by Claude Monet.  THE ART DETECTIVE Bloopers, Fakes & Mistakes
Claude Monet, Autumn Effect at Argenteuil, 1873; ©The Samuel Courtauld Trust, The Courtauld Gallery, London.  Monet was a prolific artist who produced hundreds of paintings, often returning to the same scene, from the same perspective, dozens of times. And there are thousands of Monet reproductions. As a result, it's often difficult to identify a modern copy among all the authentic variations. In some cases, however, it's obvious. The reproductions below are good examples. No one who's truly familiar with Monet would accept versions like these as authentic, but viewers new to Monet love sharing them, and some are quite popular. In fact, many rather extreme contemporary interpretations have been used by art vendors on prints and other commercial products. Note that the last image below is a cropped detail, but appears online without saying it's an altered version, or that it's only a portion of the whole picture.  Altered version of a painting by Claude Monet.  Altered version of a painting by Claude Monet.  Altered detail of a painting by Claude Monet. Claude Monet, "Impression, Sunrise," 1872; Musée Marmottan, Paris.   The blue-tinted version below is very popular, despite the fact that it varies significantly from the original. Unfortunately, a commercial reproduction often gets more exposure than the real thing, due to mass advertising in the online marketplace, and the common practice of making copies from other reproductions, rather than from firsthand sources. Sometimes modern versions become so widely known that they become the standard rather than being recognized as newly created updates. It almost amounts to fake facts at that point, and unfortunately it's very hard to shake people's belief in the manipulated copies they've come to see as authentic.  Altered version of a painting by Claude Monet.  Corrections or suggestions?
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