In October 1908 Monet and his companion Alice went to Venice for the first time on a painting trip. It was to be the first of two trips there. I have been reading the correspondance between Alice Hoschedé and her daughter back in France in Giverny. They exchanged letters each day without fail. In them Alice describes their days in Venice, the weather, the hotel food, the damp cold or heat or Monet's mood, due to either the rain or the wind. They are charming postcards left to us from a bygone era when the world was very different in so many ways. Venice was even back then full of tourists, albeit quite well-heeled travellers compared with today.
In this small fragment she describes being in a gondola with Monet in the lagoon at dusk when the lights are suddenly lit up everywhere to their amazement.
She describes also sitting in the gondola while Monet worked every day on certain motifs. She had to be very still. Ha Ha... Great to imagine Monet painting some of these pictures from a gondola.
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