Claude Manet – Impressionism – 19Th . Oscar-Claude Monet

Claude Monet's Grainstack (Sunset) is the painting I chose from the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. Monet was an impressionist painter in France, and did most of his work at his home at Giverny. Impressionism got its name from a painting that Monet painted, Impression Sunrise. Impressionist paintings are put into a category based on characteristics such as light that draws attention to objects, rough textures, and visual pleasure that the viewer receives upon looking at the paintings. Impressionist paintings are art for arts sake and focus on leisure and nature. These paintings are generally the most well known and popular paintings because of their attractive appearance.

Claude Monet Has been a big interest of mine after last summer. Last summer I traveled to Pairs and was super exited to see the Monet’s garden on my journey. This was one of the best days in my travel to see this Monet’s garden and house. After touring the garden I was astonished by the view. When I toured Claude Monet’s house I was interested in him as an artist and wanted to know more about him. His paintings and garden were beautiful, breathtaking, and I enjoyed every minute that I spent there.

In the year of 1840 little did France, let alone the world, know that it was a year to be put in the history books. On this beautiful year a man of great recognition in the art world was born. The founding father of Impressionism, Claude Monet. He had been a painter of a new style. One of his paintings titled “Across the Meadow” was simply one of the art pieces among a multitude of other phenomenal impressionist works he had completed.

Claude Monet was an artist born in the 19th century. He was well known for being one of the founders of the art movement know as impressionism. Monet created many art series in which he would paint one object multiple times, one of his most famous series being waterlilies, which was created towards the end of his life. The painting I will be talking about today is one of his many waterlily paintings, painted in 1904, ‘Waterlilies’ or ‘Nympheas’ was just one of 250 paintings in this series. The medium is oil paint on canvas and depicts a relaxing scene with waterlilies on a lake. This piece of art was part of an art period where where it defied social standards in France and was

Monet was enamored by the allure of natural light, which is why he used that as one of the main factors in his paintings. Monet would go to several lengths to get the perfect light. In Susan Stamberg’s article “Monet's Canvas Cathedrals: A Life Study of Light” she says that he should go from canvas to canvas for each scene he painted just to catch the light as it shifted. He would paint at least two to four paintings of the same scene. Through his paintings he tried to help others see the spectrum of natural light in different scenarios such as in the Grainstack and Poplars paintings.

Claude Monet was born in Paris in 1840 and would become known as one of France’s famous painters. Monet is often attributed with being the leading figure of the style of impressionism; but this was not always the case. Monet started out his career as a caricaturist, showing great skill. Eventually “Monet began to accompany [Eugène] Boudin as the older artist . . . worked outdoors, . . . this “truthful” painting, Monet later claimed, had determined his path as an artist.” Monet’s goal took off as his popularity grew in the mid 1870s after he switched from figure painting to the landscape impressionist style. William Seitz supports this statement through his quote, “The landscapes Monet painted at Argenteuil between 1872 and 1877 are

Of the impressionist movement, some would say that Oscar-Claude Monet, better known as just Claud Monet, as one of the most distinguished artist of the 19th century. He transformed French painting forever. Many painters during this time usually included landscape scenes and nature in their artwork, but none could grasp the vivid imagination Monet had, which added passion to his wonderful masterpieces. He was literally painting the way into the twentieth century with his unique style of painting, and becoming a role model for many artists to follow, showing how art can be re-imagined into something more beautiful than this world can possess.

Monet's painting Sunrise displays vivid color, which is commonly used among impressionists. The painting is of the sun rising over the lake, over looking the bay and the boats within. "Sunrise is a patently a seascape; but the painting says more about how one sees than about what one sees. It transcribes the fleeting effects of light and the changing atmosphere of water and air into a tissue of small dots and streaks of color-the elements of pure perception" (Fiero 114). This painting is typical of its style because it captures light at that moment. The sun is rising and its color is projected to everything in its path. Monet seems to capture this

He wanted to capture the change in light in every moment; hence this is the reason why he chose to paint different paintings of the same scenes. He used several canvases simultaneously so that he could capture light in each of his canvas. Hence his paintings, “Haystack 6/20”, “Haystack 7/20”, “Haystack 10/20”, these are all paintings of the same place but Monet was successfully able to show the change of color of the sample place.

Claude Monet was a prolific French painter who founded Impressionism in the 19th century. He strongly held onto his belief of his painting style throughout his long career and is considered to be one of the most prominent and influential painters in history. He focused on capturing the feeling or experience of a certain moment. He was intrigued by the light and color, so he explored their changes under various weather conditions at various times of day. Monet’s fascination of shifting effect of light and color directed him in the creation of Impressionism. In addition to his passion for depicting the visual impression, Claude strongly disliked the classical style of painting, which encouraged him to present the world as it is. Monet was disenchanted with the traditional academics of art; therefore, he was motivated to pioneer a new and fresh style of painting, which transformed visual arts and unleashed a path to the beginning of abstraction.

During the Modern Era of the late 19th century and the early 20th century, many artists were turning away from the idea of painting realistic images. Photography, having just been developed for public use a few decades earlier, made artists of the day focus less on painting as an precise copy of what is seen, as had been done for centuries. Since the Middle Ages, most artists painted exact representations of life. Starting in the late 1800s, though, many artists were starting to embrace the theory of art as an impression of what is seen. Impressionism, the art movement that began in the 1870s in France, was the first real development of this new concept of painting. Impressionists, such as Claude Monet, sought to put on canvas how they

Claude Monet is one of the most familiar and best loved of all Western artists. His images of poppy fields, poplar trees, water lilies and elegant ladies in blossoming gardens are familiar to people who have never seen the original paintings and may never have visited an art gallery. Monet's works have won a place in the affection of the general public that seems almost without parallel. (Rachman, 4) In the decades since his death in 1926, Monet's work has been intensely studied by a variety of art critics. However, none of his works have been as deeply studied as those done in Giverny, in the early twentieth century. During this time Monet's paintings, which focused on specific subject matter from various viewpoints,

Claude Monet can be classified as a forerunner of Impressionists, Neo-Impressionists, Fauvists, Cubists, Abstract painters, and the Non-Figurists. He is often called “The Father of Impressionism” (Taillander 6). Although Monet had some works accepted into the Salon, he was one of the first to paint in the Impressionist style, and persisted even after his works were rejected and shunned. Renoir said “Without Monet, we would all have given up” (qtd. in Taillander 8). Monet was seen as an extremist because he “captured the fleeting moment, creating a degree of wooliness in his canvasses which have not been interpreted with any certainty”(Taillander 8). In Monet’s paintings, his interest “lies not in details, but in capturing the effect of the whole scene as it would be perceived in a fleeting glance” (Welton 14). The term Impressionist was first given by a critic when reviewing Monet’s painting,

Impressionism as an historical art period is best described as a shift in thinking and focus. This paradigm shift, away from realism and toward individualism, began a centuries long transformation of self-expression in art as a whole. Impressionism is generally considered a French movement and is typically defined as spanning from approximately 1867 to 1886. Impressionism is best embodied by and was perhaps initiated by Claud Monet in such world-renowned works as Impressions: soleil levant which lent its name to the style and subsequently the art period as a whole.

Throughout his work, Monet maintained an imaginative grasp of the essential structure and pattern of the subject he was painting.  Other artists such as Boudin, Jongkind, and Courbet had a strong influence on this ability of Monet’s, which can be recognized in his landscape paintings made during the fifteen-year span of 1865-1880.[7] He was capable of extracting meaningful design from apparently casual scenes, thereby emphasizing the true nature of a place.  This manner of illustration can be seen in Impression, Sunrise—he places an accent on the fogginess of the harbor that is created by the smoke from the steamboats, which relates to its chief status as a major trading port.