Giverny, my village, 40 years of life.
(Daniel Goupil, sculptor, décember 2004).

I’ve always tried to gather Givernois to share and maintain an essential friendship with the harmony of the village.
The presence of Claude Monet among us is very natural.
The artist is a famous Givernois and its life is also related to the intimacy of the village whose fame has become a reality.

I am very concerned by the fact that you accept this sculpture, result of many years of projects and I am very honoured that it is placed at the heart of the village, to which I remain very attached.

This sculpture crowns 25 years of work during which I carried out many different portraits of the painter.
During all this period, my first concern was not to arrive to a formal resemblance, but rather, a manner of translating a multitude of feelings which I was to control progressively, to approach closer to the inaccessible truth of the presence of the painter.

I wanted to represent a mature man in full possession of his art, at the apogee of his talent. Its beard, by its width and its form, symbolizes at the same time the force and the fluid undulatory moving stream present in its work.
This fluidity takes us along towards the vibrations of its face which underline the questioning of its glance sheltered and protected by the neutral mass from its hat.