August 7, 2025

The celebrated impressionist worked mainly in blue and cool tones for many years. Yet, at the end of his life, his canvases were a riot of reds and yellows in an apparent about-turn. Far from being down to a change of style, it was in fact due to a change in perception. In 1912, Claude Monet learned that he had cataracts, a disease of the eye that seems to have left its mark on his work. By distorting the light coming into the eye, cataracts reduce the capacity to perceive blue and purple and accentuate perception of warmer colors. The painter could distinguish details less well, which impacted the finesse of his brush strokes: “my bad eyesight meant that I saw everything through a fog,” he wrote. “It’s very beautiful and it’s what I would like to be able to represent in my art.” Known for his tendency towards stubbornness, he continued to paint and refused to be operated on. Understandable, as at the time, any surgical intervention carried a real risk of permanent blindness.

To better understand how his eyesight problems changed his art, take a look at the two paintings below:

Monet, Degas Van Gogh didn’t see as clearly as we think – EYESEEMAG