If It Were Mini: Monet's Gallery Studio

 

I've finished my most colorful project to date -- a mini replica of Claude Monet's gallery studio. It's a room in his house where he met with potential clients and art dealers. His separate painting studio was in another nearby building.

Here's my finished room:

Below is how the studio appeared around 1915. For scale reference, Monet (1840-1926) was 5'9" tall.

And my finished room, below:

Here's a modern screen grab from the Visite Virtuelle tour on the Académie des Beaux-Arts site:

Those were the two main photos I worked from to come up with my version, below:

See the bust on his desk? I was really curious about who it was; to find out which great historical figure Monet found to be inspiring. Turns out the bust is of Monet himself, sculpted by Paul Paulin. Monet displayed it after Paulin gifted it to him around 1908. 

I couldn't source a mini Monet bust, so I'm displaying Michelangelo's instead. I chose not to copy the bronze finish because I was afraid the details wouldn't show as well. 

The photos he displayed are his 1921 Vanity Fair portrait, his second wife Alice on the beach in Normandy, and two women on his famous Japanese bridge.

The room's paintings are reproductions, and it seems the museum changes which are displayed. The museum recreated the original room in 2011. (Surprisingly recently, huh?)

Here's a close-up of the photos and bust on this side of the room:

The bust is of Georges Clemenceau, France's Prime Minister and friend of Monet. The picture beside Monet's is obscured by the bust, so I put in a copy of Monet and Alice feeding pigeons. I also snuck in a tiny French feve (a trinket traditionally hidden in a Mardi Gras King cake). I figured Monet would approve.

I lost the feve when I took the room outside to photograph en plein air, so it only shows up sometimes.

I made the lampshades with the same fabric I used everywhere else -- I just colored it with markers as needed. The view is of his painting studio across the yard.

Even though Monet didn't paint in this room after 1899, I included a used palette and paint tubes in the open drawer below. I figured he'd have them for sentimental reasons.

I glued tiny fresh green bamboo pieces to the ends of my Tootsie Toy table, and the cane on the wicker chair is stretchy packing material.

The lights are made from a frozen dumping package. As he cooked them, Mr. If It Were Mine held it up and said, "This is cool. Can you use these for something?"

And just for fun, a few in-progress photos I took along the way:

And still to come...how I spent my summer vacation (shopping):

and how I landscaped A Walk in Monet's Garden:

I'll link the studio video once it's finished.