Monet at the Pola Museum of Art, Hakone: Guide

The Pola Museum of Art, in the forested hills of Hakone, holds one of the strongest collections of Claude Monet in Japan. It is also one of the most enjoyable places anywhere to look at Impressionism, because the museum was designed around the landscape rather than dropped into it.

A private collection opened to the public

The museum opened in 2002 to house the collection assembled over some four decades by Tsuneshi Suzuki, whose family business gave the museum its name. The collection is broad, taking in Japanese painting, glass, ceramics and cosmetics history, but its heart is nineteenth and twentieth-century French art, with Impressionism especially well represented. The building itself is sunk into the hillside within the Fuji-Hakone-Izu National Park so that the forest is preserved above it; visitors descend into daylit galleries with the woods visible outside. Few museums anywhere have integrated their setting so completely into the experience of looking at pictures.

Japan’s affection for Monet is long standing, and it runs both ways: Monet collected Japanese prints, hung them at Giverny and built a Japanese-inspired water garden there. Seeing his paintings in a Hakone forest, with maples and cedar just beyond the glass, closes that loop rather neatly. Each of the works below can be commissioned as a hand-painted oil reproduction, painted to order in traditional oils.

14 Monet works from Pola Museum of Art

Flowered Riverbank, Argenteuil

1877

Close view of pale green flower stems rising from foliage against a warm tan and pink background, loosely brushed.

Gladiolus

1881

Gladiolus

1881

Detail of dense blue-green shrubs and trees dabbed in short strokes against a pale sky.

Haystacks at Giverny

1884

Three golden haystacks stand in a green field before a row of tall trees under a pale blue sky.

Haystacks at Giverny

1884

Houses of Parliament, Symphony in Rose

1900

Flowering shrubs in yellow-green and rust tones frame a blue sea with a small sailboat, in dabbed strokes.

Landscape, Varengeville

1882

Vertical bands of terracotta, dusky rose and pale sage evoke a weathered stone facade's carved details, laid in short choppy strokes.

Rouen Cathedral, Portal

1892

Thick plumes of white and grey smoke rise diagonally over a hillside town, with a dark train below and small figures in a green field.

The Goods Train

1872

Two women in pale pink dresses sit in a small boat, one holding an oar, against a backdrop of dense green foliage.

The Pink Skiff

1890

Pastel Venetian buildings line a narrow canal with a small stone bridge and a gondola passing beneath.

The Rio della Salute

1908

A narrow Venice canal winds past a rose-pink palazzo and a low stone footbridge under a pale blue sky.

The Rio della Salute

1908

Train Tracks at the Saint-Lazare Station

1877

A broad snow-covered hillside slopes across the canvas, with village roofs and bare trees below and a church spire in the pale misty distance.

Winter in Giverny

1885

These paintings sit at the softer, greener end of Monet's range, and they suit interiors built around natural materials: pale wood, paper, linen, stone. Because the tones are gentle, they do not overpower a small room, and they read well in the diffuse light of a north-facing space. Water and garden subjects are the obvious choice above a low sideboard or a bed, where a horizontal picture settles the wall. If you are furnishing a calm room and want art that adds depth without adding noise, this is the group to start from. Browse the full collection when you are ready.

Official collection: Pola Museum of Art