Monet after being punched
Almost three years ago, an unhinged Irish gentleman named Andrew Shannon punched a 141-year-old Monet painting hanging in Ireland’s National Gallery. Argenteuil Basin with a Single Sailboat was ruined—or so it seemed.
The painting had three jagged rips down its center, twisted outward from where Shannon’s fist hit the canvas. Shannon, for his part, is now serving a five-year sentence for his crime, which Metro UK explained as “an attempt to ‘get back at the state.'” But the painstaking restoration has taken almost as long as his prison sentence.
While it seems beyond repair in the image above, conservators at the National Gallery posted a detailed account of what sounds a lot like a harrowing surgery on its website.