An article in the NY Times discusses the work of Michael Marmor, a professor of ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine who has created a computer simulation of how eye diseases such as macular degeneration and cataracts have affected the painting styles of a number of impressionist artists.
Claude Monet, for example, was known to have suffered from slowly progressive cataracts. Although diagnosed in 1912, problems with his vision began about 7 years earlier, when Monet, who was then 65, began to complain of changes in his perception of colour:
…colors no longer had the same intensity for me…reds had begun to look muddy…my painting was getting more and more darkened. on the one hand trusting solely to the labels on the tubes of paint and, on the other, to force of habit.
As his vision continued to deteriorate, Monet’s paintings became darker, less detailed and more abstract. The subject matter of the above painting from 1920 – the Japanese footbridge at Giverny, immortalized in his earlier water lily paintings – is barely recognizable.
In 1923, Monet finally agreed to have the cataract in his right eye surgically removed. The procedure had been available since the turn of the century, but he had until then refused it. Although he never had his left eye operated on, he was eventually fitted with effective corrective lenses.
Marmor, M. F. (2006). Ophthalmology and Art: Simulation of Monet’s Cataracts and Degas’ Retinal Disease. Arch. Ophthalmol. 124:1764-1769. [Full text]