Show me the Monet! How gallery gift shops cash in

Here’s a question: what did Claude Monet smell like? The prune liqueur the artist liked to drink, perhaps? Linseed oil and the lavender in his garden in Giverny, France? The cigarettes he is supposed to have chain-smoked?
The perfumer Lyn Harris has poured thought and toil into this question, and her answer is bergamot and neroli (the warmth and energy of a sunrise), thyme, rosemary and sage (a misty harbour at dawn) sea moss (crisp aquatic notes), vetiver and birch with a leathery undertone (the shadow and smoke of industry).
Her scented candle was a commission from the auction house Sotheby’s — part of its celebrations for this year’s 150th anniversary of impressionism — and a response to the painting that gave the movement its name, Monet’s Impression Soleil Levant (1872), shown at the first impressionist exhibition in Paris in 1874.
Monet is not the only impressionist to have been translated into scent this year. To mark an exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, his friend Mary Cassatt has been distilled into a candle with the aroma of her favourite flower (rose).
The Courtauld, which next month hosts a survey of Monet’s paintings of the River Thames, has turned Édouard Manet’s Bar at the Folies-Bergère (1882) into a candle with not just the smell but the look of an orange (there’s a bowl of them in the painting’s foreground).
In the multimillion-pound business of museum merchandising, artist-inspired scents are in vogue. The Brooklyn Museum has one inspired by Hiroshige (dried leaf meets charcoal), the Château de Fontainebleau a Napoleon (wood, musk, suede) and the Royal Academy (RA) a William Kentridge that evokes the South African’s garden and favoured materials (charcoal, pencils and paper). An iron-scented perfume (£150 a bottle) commissioned for the Antony Gormley exhibition at the RA in 2019 sold out in days.
“It’s experiential,” says the RA’s head of retail, Emma Sinclair. “We saw it too with a water lilies bath essence for [the 2016 exhibition] Painting the Modern Garden. Senses come into it a lot — tactility is another one, especially with impressionist-themed works: all those textures in the paint that you want to touch. Our felt version of Grayson Perry’s [2011 ceramic sculpture] Red Alan is one of our biggest sellers.”
Spurred on by cuts in funding, merch has become a way for cultural institutions to navigate a volatile economic climate. Well-chosen products can make a considerable dent in the cost of an exhibition. Tate Modern’s 2022-23 Cezanne, for instance, delivered over £1 million in shop sales.
Consequently, exiting through the gift shop is now an established part of the museum experience, and sometimes the best part. A bit of dedicated sifting beyond the umbrellas and bookmarks can be rewarded with imaginative, even avant-garde gifts and artist editions.
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It won’t surprise you to learn that Monet is the golden goose. His water lily paintings embellish a Rubik’s Cube, a music box, a deckchair and a cute set of “turn your baby into an art critic” cards, while his rotund form has been turned into a Christmas decoration.
Would Monet turn in his grave? Perhaps not. In 1911, he gave three water lily paintings to his friend Gustave Geffroy, the director of the Gobelins tapestry factory, to turn into wall hangings. His fellow impressionists Degas and Pissarro would probably have been OK with their keyrings and jigsaw puzzles: they exhibited painted fans at the fourth impressionist exhibition in 1879.
The full range developed by the Courtauld for the exhibition Monet and London: Views of the Thames, which begins on September 27, is under wraps, but it includes earrings inspired by the sun rising and setting over the Thames, and a matchbox-sized watercolour set filled with the colours Monet used to create his iridescent paintings of the river.
“We try to support local makers and develop bespoke products,” says Anna Balan, the gallery’s senior buyer, who scouts markets, trade shows and social media. She buys in small runs, “so we’re very agile if something doesn’t work”.
The Courtauld’s shop accounted for about a third of gallery revenue last year, although it ran into criticism in 2022: a £6 eraser in the shape of an ear, which accompanied an exhibition of Van Gogh self-portraits, was withdrawn after being branded “shallow and insensitive”.
For Mary Cassatt at Work, the Philadelphia Museum of Art decided to “lean into the fact she was an expat in Paris”, says the gallery’s marketing officer, Paul Dien. That means peplum jackets, copper watering cans, fans and embroidered table linen, although the pick of the lot are caramels made to Cassatt’s recipe. Dien also commissioned Cassatt koozies — a foam sleeve that keeps your beer can cold — as gifts for exhibition donors.
“We can do elegant, but we also want to surprise and delight,” he tells me. “I think historically museums have been a bit precious with their products, but all of us are trying to bring a freshness that will encourage younger and more diverse audiences.”
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Clothing collaborations with youth brands have proved rewarding: PacSun at the Met in New York (miniskirts and hoodies), for instance, and Cariuma at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam (sustainable sneakers). It’s not new, though. In 1963, Picasso collaborated with White Stag on printed corduroy ponchos and anoraks that reinterpreted his bulls and “magic” fauns in fashionable colourways. Artist-designed skateboard decks are everywhere too: Raymond Pettibon and Andy Warhol at the Institute for Contemporary Art in Boston; Jeff Koons and Faith Ringgold at The Museum of Modern Art in New York (MoMA).
Museums began offering merchandise in the late 18th century. Prints, catalogues and guides were the principal fare. The British Museum, for instance, issued a Synopsis of the Contents of the British Museum in 1808, and the Louvre launched its Chalcographie — a copperplate engraving studio — in 1797. The Chalcographie’s collection has been augmented since by commissions from artists including Louise Bourgeois and Peter Doig.
Photographs of the Met in 1921 and the RA in 1932 indicate the rudimentary nature of early shops — a few boards propped behind the ticketing desk, or a table laid with books and postcards. By the 1980s, though, retail had moved front and centre. When the Met renovated its Great Hall in 1979, it allocated 12,000 sq ft to a permanent store. The merchandise became more sophisticated too, if of its era. An RA mail order catalogue from that time is dominated by goblets and a president’s port, while the catalogue for its The Gold of El Dorado exhibition in 1978 was made to look like a packet of Benson and Hedges cigarettes (the tobacco company co-sponsored the show).
Today, the shops at the Met stock about 4,000 products and earned the museum $46 million last year. “We have a Met campus sweatshirt that tends to sell out,” says the head of retail, Stephen Mannello. “Chocolate printed with art — we weren’t sure if that would resonate, but it’s been amazing. Our perennial bestseller is a Louis Comfort Tiffany peacock shawl.”
For all museums, the process of merchandising an exhibition begins about a year out. With time on their side, the RA prefers to “play around a bit to make it uniquely RA”, Sinclair says. “The gold and red-toned marbled paper we’ve created for our Florence exhibition [Michelangelo, Leonardo, Raphael, opening in November] has a streak of lime green for a contemporary edge.”
Having living academicians at their disposal also makes for inventive, one-of-a-kind collaborations. For example, Gormley’s Handstones — a set of five bronze impressions of the artist’s hands — sold out long ago and now reach nearly double their original cost (£,1500). For her retrospective last year, Marina Abramovic created Little Rock Looking at You, an edition of cast-iron black rocks with hand-painted eyes. Anything that hasn’t worked? “That’s easy. Things without spirit or beauty,” Sinclair says.
“Often the best stuff leans into humour,” Dien says, “and that’s easier when you’re dealing with contemporary artists; much harder when you’re an encyclopaedia-type museum like us.” He’s trying, though.
Perched above the cavernous Great Stair Hall at the Pennsylvania Museum of Art is a 13ft-tall, 1893 statue of the goddess Diana in gold that in a former life served as the weather vane on the tower of Madison Square Garden in New York. You couldn’t get more creaky Gilded Age if you tried, but this year Dien threw caution to the wind and reinterpreted her in neon pink. “It feels a bit punk rock, a bit Vivienne Westwood, a bit street,” he says. “It’s been a big hit.”
Monet and London: Views of the Thames is at the Courtauld, WC2, from Sep 27 to Jan 19; courtauld.ac.uk
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