Great Paintings of the World with Andrew Marr resumes with Monet's Water Lilies

Series 2 of Great Paintings of the World with Andrew Marr - opens with Monet's Water Lilies

A year ago, back in the first lockdown in 2020, Great Paintings of the World with Andrew Marr on Channel 5 was a new programme which was a bright spark for all those bereft of visits to art galleries and museums. (see Great Paintings of the World with Andrew Marr 22 June 2020)

...and then it stopped after Episode 3!

So I did some digging about what had happened and was able to report back in Good news re Great Paintings of the World with Andrew Marr - in which 

• I reported that Channel 5 had told me that it would resume later in the year.
• reviewed the series to date and how it had been received
• commented on the need for museums to make more art available online
  

Presumably that statement from Channel 5 was made with the idea that nothing much would happen after the first lockdown. In other words, the events of the latter part of 2020 and first part of 2021 had clearly NOT been anticipated.

Which is why we are only now seeing (what I hope are) the next three episodes of this series.

Series 2

I'm absolutely certain one of the future programmes is going to be about Monet's Water Lilies at the Musée de l'Orangerie in Paris (because of the pics for the series). These paintings absolutely overwhelmed me and filled my eyes with tears the first time I saw them. I was incredibly lucky to see them for the very first time incredibly early one Saturday morning in the late 80s with nobody else in the room. I'd arrived in Paris on the Motorail from Provence (a service which is no longer available!). My visit to the water lilies was followed by a very nice lunch near the L'Orangerie and my driving out to Giverny to visit Monet's garden - and then to Calais for the ferry and back home to London.

A day I will never ever forget - I've got a very clear visual memory of it even now!

Series 2 comprises:

• Episode 1 - Water Lilies - by Claude Monet
  
• Episode 2 - The Hay Wain - by John Constable on Friday 18th June 2021
  
• Episode 3 - ??

I don't know if there are going to be more episodes after the Hay Wain as there's nothing on the website. As indicated in one of my earlier blog posts about this series, the introduction to the series suggests the following are in the pipeline

• Sandro Botticelli's The Birth of Venus (Le Galerie degli Uffizi, Florence)
• Rembrandt van Rijn's The Night Watch (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam)
• Diego Velázquez's The Toilet of Venus (The Rokeby Venus) (National Gallery)
• John Millais's Ophelia (Tate Britain)

READ MORE about Water Lilies by Monet on this blog!

• Gardens in Art: Monet's final Nympheas (30 September 2007) 
  
• Gardens in Art: Monet and the water garden at Giverny (29 September 2007) 
• Gardens in Art continues - with Monet (4 September 2007)

You can also take a virtual visit to Monet's Waterlilies in the Musée de l'Orangerie in Paris

Plus see my videos of them - as seen back in September 2009. The first is a proper video - of each room at the Musée de l'Orangerie devoted to "The Grand Decorations"

The next one is a slideshow

Series 1

This covered the following paintings and is available on demand on Channel 5. These were:

• EPISODE 1 - Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci
• EPISODE 2 - Sunflowers by Vincent van Gogh
• EPISODE 3 - The Fighting Temeraire by JMW Turner

Note that on the Channel 5 Page for the episodes, they've got the wrong paintings with every Episode!  

 

Images for every episode are WRONG!

 

I love the fact Channel 5 is getting involved with Art on Television - and this is a good series - but a bit more attention to presentation online would not go amiss!