More than just a pair of glasses

How ZEISS lenses influenced the artist Claude Monet's creative process

Claude Monet was the poster child for impressionism. But the French artist initially lacked both fame and a steady income. In the winter of his artistic career, he even had to contend with cataracts. But he never gave up on painting the world as he saw it – until he almost went blind, in fact. Finally, it was a pair of glasses with ZEISS lenses that helped him see the world in color once more.

Monet did eventually receive the recognition he deserved during his lifetime. His work was showcased at the top Paris galleries to great success; he sold many paintings and, in 1890, had sufficient funds to purchase a house in Giverny, which lies to the northwest of Paris. Over the years he cultivated a vast garden in two parts. Plants and flowers from all over the world still flourish there to this day. Tall ferns frame the flowerbeds, while iris-entwined bridges pepper the garden. And then there are the poppies that reminded Monet of the corn fields he so delighted in painting.

The birds chirp happily in the treetops. The flora clings to a pond of scattered water lilies: this is probably Monet's best-known subject, for which he drew his inspiration from the Japanese artwork he so revered – even his porcelain cat was an import from Japan. It was this paradise he created that inspired him to paint so often in series.

"It suddenly dawned on me how wonderful my pond was, and I immediately reached for my palette," wrote Monet in his personal notebook. He went on to paint hundreds of water lily scenes. And it was in Giverny that Monet noticed the deterioration in his vision. "Cataracts caused him to perceive light and colors in a completely different way. And since he always painted exactly what he saw, this transformed his painting style," says Marianne Mathieu.

It led him to paint the Japanese bridge at the heart of his vast garden and the water lilies in a way that recalls abstract art more than it does impressionism. Cataract causes the eye's lens to go cloudy and a person's vision to become "misty," with colors becoming increasingly indistinct. Without treatment, cataract patients slowly lose their eyesight.

But at the time, ophthalmology was undergoing a quantum leap. In 1900, Swedish ophthalmologist and subsequent Nobel laureate Allvar Gullstrand began working with ZEISS. In 1908 Moritz von Rohr utilized the fruits of this collaboration, which included the slit lamp used for eye exams and the world's first precision lenses, to begin setting up the eyeglass department at ZEISS. Another product of the collaboration was the development of aspheric lenses for those patients who had undergone cataract surgery.

These strong plus lenses (or aphakia lenses) compensated for the extremely defective vision patients had to endure after cataract surgery when the eye, now devoid of its natural lens, could no longer effectively diffract the light entering it to project a clear image on the retina. The second effect of cataract surgery is that once the cloudy lens is removed, colors can be seen much more clearly once again. This knowledge led to the launch of the Katral lenses in 1912. That same year, Monet was diagnosed with cataract.  "I was no longer able to see colors as brightly as I used to," wrote Monet in 1918 in his personal notebook.

"Reds appeared dull, pinks washed-out, and there were many colors I could simply no longer recognize." The midday sun became too bright for him to bear, and in 1923 he finally consented to surgery after buckling under the pressure. "Back then, a surgery like this was a major risk. Hygiene standards were poor, but Monet was about to lose his eyesight," says Professor Barbara Pierscionek, Vision Scientist at England's Staffordshire University. The surgery involved removing the eye's natural lens. And artificial lens replacements were not yet available.

"While not ideal, glasses were his only chance of being able to see at all, and of painting ever again," says Barbara Pierscionek. Monet tried out different pairs of glasses. One of these is said to have had a bluing effect on the lenses. The glasses allowed Monet to perceive color in a greater intensity. "He found that the ZEISS lenses helped him see the best," says Dr. Ralf Dahm, Director of Scientific Management at the Institute of Molecular Biology in Mainz. Dahm is a biologist who knows the ins and outs of transparent tissue, but he is also an art enthusiast who delves into how eye diseases have negatively impacted different artists.