Claude Monet – An Impression Upon the Landscape
Oscar Claude Monet was born in a Parisian apartment on November 14th 1840. He has become the most recognized Impressionist Painter of the twentieth century: Indeed, Claude Monet was the father, the creator of Impressionism. His sensitive perception of nature and artistic philosophies toward landscape painting gave precedence to en plein-air landscape painting which became popular among the new generation Impressionist artists of the twentieth century.
His father Claude Adolphe Monet run the family grocers and his mother Louise Justine Aubrée Monet was a singer.
Monet entered the Le Harve School of Arts in 1851 after the family relocated there from Paris in 1845. Eugène Boudin (1824 – 1898) was among the first French landscape artists to paint plein-air. His seascape oil paintings have always been particularly admired: Camille Carot described Boudin as “Master of the Sky”.
Eugène Boudin became Monet’s mentor after they meet upon the Normandy beaches around 1856. Over a course of several months Boudin taught Monet how to use oils in his studio; as well as the techniques and concepts of en plein-air painting. Boundin and Monet remained lifelong friends: Indeed, Monet paid tribute to Boudin’s early stimulus and inspiration. Boudin exhibited at the Paris Salons and did not consider himself to be revolutionary or trendsetter. He also exhibited alongside Monet and his group of young contemporaries in 1874 when they gathered together for what would become the first ever Impressionist Show.
In 1862 Monet began to study under Charles Gleyre in Paris. It was here Monet met Sisley, Renoir and Bazille who shared his philosophical approach to en plein- air landscape painting. In 1866 Monet’s La femme à la robe verte - The Woman in the Green Dress – brought Monet recognition within the arts - His future wife Camille Doncieux modelled for The Woman in the Green Dress, hence this oil painting is sometimes referred to simply as Camille.
His wife (then companion) also modelled for Women in The Garden painted in 1866, when Monet was just twenty-six years old – During this period much of his work was experimental with regards to subject and technique. The Women in the Garden is a large landscape painting; partly created en plein-air in the garden of Monet’s rented home. Camille posed for each of the women and Monet referred to magazine illustrations to adorn her figure with the latest fashions.
Monet had exhibited some of his early art works at the Paris Salon. However, in 1867 Women in the Garden was rejected due to possessing a weak narrative: Although the bold brushwork of this painting that today defines the Impressionist Movement worried the Salon Judges: Their opinion bring that, Too many young people think of nothing but continuing in this abominable direction. It is high time to protect them and save art....
On the Bank of the Seine, Bennecourt painted in 1868 is another early example of Monet’s en plein-air impressions of the landscape. His ability to capture a scene through colorful suggestion and gesture is evident. Impression Sunrise was painted in 1872 from the artist’s window in Le Harve. Monet needed a title for the exhibition catalogue and as the artist did not feel the painting could strictly be described as a view of Le Harve he called it an Impression.
Monet explained, the painting was, “Nothing but an impression, and an instantaneous one”. And as he noted - “Hence this label that was given us”.... The label Monet is referring to was the headline for a hostile review by art critic Louis Leroy published in the Le Chavarian newspaper: It read The Exhibition of Impressionists: A term now used to define one of the most significant art movements of the twentieth century.
Impression — I was certain of it. I was just telling myself that, since I was impressed, there had to be some impression in it … and what freedom, what ease of workmanship! Wallpaper in its embryonic state is more finished than that seascape – Louis Leroy.
Monet’s Impression, soleil levant – Impression, Sunrise – clearly utilises the distinct Impressionist technique of loose brushwork that suggests form: As opposed to dictating it. This oil painting represented the birth of Impressionism and a breakthrough for modern and contemporary art.
Claude Monet
One hundred years after conception Impressionist Canvas Art remains extremely popular in the twenty-first century. One can buy reproductions of some of the most famous art works in the world by some of the greatest Impressionist artists of the twentieth century: Including the founder of Impressionist oil painting, Oscar Claude Monet.
Claude Monet was not born into privileged surroundings: Nor particularly artistic surroundings. He was the second son of Parisians Claude Adolphe and Louise Justine Aubrée Monet: A Grocer and a Singer respectively. Born on November 14th 1840 Claude Monet (as he is most commonly referred to today) would become the founder of one of the greatest art movements of the twentieth century: That is Impressionism. A word that today describes an artistic movement: An expression that was first used to describe Monet’s ground breaking oil painting, ‘Impression – Sunrise’ completed in 1872.
Born in Paris his family relocated to Normandy when he was five years old. His father was hoping Oscar would enter the family business but in the Spring of 1851, when he was eleven years old, Monet began studying at the Le Havre secondary school of Art. By that time he was already somewhat famous in Le Harve – Regularly selling charcoal caricatures for up to twenty francs in the town. Jacques-François Ochardwas Monets first tutor. A traditional artist and preciously a student of Jacques-Louis David: A highly influential nineteenth century Neoclassical Salon painter - And somewhat of a dictator with regards to the French arts during the Revolution.
When Monet was eleven years old he met Eugène Boudinwho was one of the first generation En Plein Air painters: In particular renowned for his seascape oil paintings – Described by the French Landscape painter Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot and nineteenth century art critic Charles Pierre Baudelaire as "master of the sky”. Boudin became Monet’s mentor: The man who would introduce the En Plein Air oil painting techniques that would set him on the pathway to becoming one of the greatest artists of the twentieth century: The father of Impressionism as he is so often referred to today. Monet would spend one year learning the techniques of En Plein Air oil painting from Eugène Boudin: In 1857 his tutoring ended when his mother died and Monet left Le Harve to live with his aunt Marie-Jeanne Lecadre.
Monet spent several years in Paris and it was here he became friends with other new generation painters including Édouard Manetwho was among the most prominent nineteenth century oil painters – A crucial figure with regards to the artistic transition from Realism and Impressionism. Manet’s early canvas art works instigated much controversy in the world of art. In particular a highly contentious oil painting completed by him in 1863: Le déjeuner sur l'herbe- "Luncheon on the Grass" — originally titled by Manet as Le Bain(The Bath).
Le déjeuner sur l'herbe was first put on public display at the Salon des Refusés in 1863. This was an exhibition of oil paintings officially rejected by the Paris Salon. This oil painting featured a naked women casually taking luncheon outside with two clothed gentlemen: A scene that was shocking for the French public at the time. Manet’s intention had been to affront the propriety values of the times and instigate a push toward a more liberated environment for artistic expression. Indeed, this oil painting provided a stepping stone for younger painters into the world of Impressionism.
Throughout his early life Monet studied and pursued the life of an artist: And in many aspects he enjoyed success in that pursuit. And yet curiously, despite his obvious passion and talent for the arts, at twenty one years of age he signed up for seven years in the First Regiment of African Light Cavalry based in Algeria. However, in 1963 after serving just two years Monet contracted Typhoid. Worried his aunt would intervene: Freeing him from his remaining five year commitment on the promise that he would re-establish and continue his artistic studies.
Monet had become increasingly disillusioned with regards to the confines of the traditional arts being taught during that time – Perhaps one of the reasons he joined the regiment in Algeria: And why his return to study was a stipulation of his Aunt before she would agree to secure his release. This requirement would turn out to be a leap of fate for Monet and indeed for the arts of the twentieth century. All roads now led Monet to study with Charles Gleyre: A Swiss oil painter who had taken charge of the Paul Delaroche studios in 1843. In was here that Monet would meet Sisley, Bazille and Renoir. Together these artists would investigate those new techniques and artistic approaches that would later become a worldwide phenomenon. A phenomenon known today as Impressionism.
Claude Oscar Monet is in many senses the quintessential Impressionist painter. The spontaneity and vivacity of his canvas art technique and his devotion to the close observation of nature have been the focus of most discussions of his art. However the range of his subject matters, the complexities of his exhibiting strategies and his response to the variety of artistic and socio-historical transformations experienced during his lifetime are fundamental to understanding his unique contribution to the history of art.
Born in 1840 in Paris, where his father was a wholesale grocer, Monet lived in Le Havre from the age of five; the Normandy region was to be a vital influence on him throughout his life. His earliest reputation was as a caricaturist, but by the mid -1850s Monet, with the encouragement of the atmospheric landscape painter Eugene Boudin (1824-98), had begun to paint from the motif in the air.
Monet’s artistic career began in earnest with his first trip to Paris in 1859. On his arrival in the capital he was befriended by a number of painters associated with the Realist movement, most notably Brabizon painter Constant Troyton (1810-65) and the young Camille Pissarro (1830-1903). He also received his first formal training, becoming a pupil for two years in the studio of the academic painter Charles Gleyre (1808-74). It was there that he made a number of artistic friendships that were to have a formative influence on him: he met Pierre Aguste Renoir (1841-1919), Frederic Bazille (1841-70) and Alfred Sisely (1839-99).
Despite legends stating the contrary, Monet had a degree of success at provincial exhibitions as well as at the annual state sponsored art exhibition held in Paris each year in May, the Salon. In 1865, having made painting trips to the forest of Fontainbleau and the Normandy coast at Honfleur and Le Havre, where he met the Dutch open-air painter Johan Barthold Jongkind (1819-91), Monet sent two of his seascapes to the Salon exhibition and they were accepted. A portrait of his mistress, Camille Doncieux, and a landscape canvas art were also accepted in 1866 and another seascape in 1868.
Inspired in part by the controversial paintings Edouard Manet (1832-83) was producing in the last years of the 1860s, Monet began to wrestle with subjects derived from the modern life of Paris. The capital had been undergoing a process of extraordinary transformation on the initiative of Emperor Napoleon the 3rds prefect< Baron Haussmann. ‘Haussmannisation’ cut a series of huge boulevards, lined with large scale expensive apartment blocks and arcades of shops, through the city’s labyrinthine medieval streets, so beloved of an earlier generation of Romantic Poets and Artists. These changes necessitated the transplantation of the workers of Paris. – Who lived in small upper rooms of the old buildings above the more lavish apartments of wealthier Parisians – to a new region of suburbs beyond the city walls. Monet, like many artists of the impressionist circle, became fascinated with both the phenomena of boulevard culture and the suburban districts, in which many pleasure spots blossomed alongside the factories on the banks of the river Seine.
Monet’s technique and style reflect a wonderful awareness of the achievements of his teachers and contemporaries while also creating a unique and constantly transforming personal vision. The young Monet synthesised the open-air techniques practiced by Boudin and Jongkind and theorised by the drawing master Lecoq de Boisbaudran with the controversial subject matter of modern experience. The more abrupt handling and traditional palette of his earliest canvas art works were derived from the manner of Realist painters such as Gustav Courbet (1819-77) and followers of the Brabizon School. In the following decades, Monet moved away from the traditional modelling in black and white, known as Chiaroscuro, to a sense of depth and volume created entirely through colour relationships. Rather than using the reddish-brown underpainting typical of the nineteenth century. Monet began to paint on canvases primed in white or beige tones to enhance the brilliance of the colours.
Monet experimented with varying degrees of finish throughout his career, although it was not until the 1880s that he would exhibit his most sketchy works publicly. (Sketches such as the famous painting of La Grenouillere and the beach at Troutville, now in the National Gallery, London were almost certainly intended as private notations rather than works for public exhibition.) However, his practice of building up a work was to be fairly consistent throughout his life. He would first lay in the main elements of the composition in the appropriate colours in a loose underpainting, and he would then work up all these areas in a range of broad contours and small surface brush strokes, as fitting to the feature being described. Despite his protestations in later life, this process of elaboration was not always preformed in front of the subject, but rather over a period of days or often months in the studio, as Monet’s letters of the 1880s to the dealer Durand Ruel testify.
Many of Monet’s views of Paris from the 1860s adopt unusual viewpoints and incorporate ambiguous hints of narratives about the relationship of the tiny figures evoked through his summary brush strokes. The overall effect of these compositional devices had many precedents, not only the unusual perspectives typical of the Japanese prints of which Monet, was an avid collector, but also his awareness of the world of the Flaneur described with such verve in Charles Baudelaire’s The Painter of Modern Life. This delightful and influential essay which nominally describes the achievement of Constantin Guys (1802-92), a draughtsman who evocatively captures the fashions and the social types of the Second Empire, articulates the unique freedom and anonymity available to the young man as he wanders around absorbing the spectacle of the new Paris. Monet Eloquently captures this mood of exploration and mystery in his aloof aerial views of the manicured public gardens, bridges and boulevards at the heart of Paris and the chance encounters of its suburban fringe.
In 1866, Monet began his response to Manet’s scandalous painting Dejeunner sur I’Herbe, which had been rejected by the Salon of 1863 on the grounds of indecency, with a monumental painting of a picnic enjoyed by elegant Parisian men and women. Regrettably, it never came to fruition, and only a sketch and a few fragments survive. Monet did complete a second large-scale painting of fashionable women at play, Women in the Garden, which he executed entirely in the open air. However, it too was rejected by the Salon of 1867. This was a period of some personal and professional strain for Monet. His mistress Camille was pregnant with their son, Jean and, although Monet’s father had been supportive of his son’s artistic career, he would not tolerate this romantic alliance. Suffering financial difficulties, Monet returned to the family home in Le Havre and left Camille in Paris. However, they were reunited after the birth of their son, Jean, living first at Etretat and then in Bougival, where Renoir and Pissarro were frequent visitors along with colleagues on sketching trips around suburban pleasure spots such as the floating restaurant, La Grenouillere.
In 1870, Monet and Camille were married and made a honeymoon trip to Troutville, a resort on the Normandy coast. With the outbreak of the Franco Prussian war in July of 1870, the Monet’s took the decision to flee to London. A number of other artistic figures had also left for London, including, most significantly for Monet, the leading art dealer, Paul Durand-Ruel, who soon became a vitally important and lifelong patron for Monet and the Impressionist circle. During the nine months the family spent in London, Monet painted numerous views of the city parks and of the river Thames. After travelling through Holland in the summer, where he painted at Zaandam near Amsterdam, the Monet’s returned to France and settled in a suburb to the west of Paris called Argenteuil. Monet remained there until 1878, and many of his friends – Renoir, Sisley, Gustave Caillebotte (1848-94) and Manet – joined him there to paint the life of the river Seine, a site of pleasure boating, swimming and river cafes as well as a burgeoning industrial town.
Durand-Ruel had been an avid buyer for these paintings but in 1873 he suffered financial losses. Monet and his friends had to find a new set of patrons and they embarked on planning an independent exhibition to draw attention to their work. On the boulevard Capucines in the studio of Nadar, a leading photographer of the day, the Societe Anonyme des Peintres, Sculpteurs et Graveurs held its first exhibition in April of 1874. A contemporary critic coined the term ‘Impressionism’ in response to Monet’s unusually sketchy view in greyish blue and orange of the industrial harbour at Le Havre enshrouded in fog entitled Impression, Sunrise . This exhibition achieved certain notoriety, although it did little to raise the prices that the artists could ask for their work as proved by the 1875 auction of the Jean-Baptiste Faure collection of works by Berthe Morisot (1841-95), Renoir and Sisley also showed paintings at the second, third, fourth and seventh of the eight exhibitions mounted by the Impressionist group between 1876 and 1884.
Monet met Ernest Hoschede and his wife Alice in 1876, and they were to play an important role in his later life. Hoschede commissioned Monet to paint four paintings to create a decorative ensemble for the main receiving rooms at his home just outside Paris. After Hoschede’s bankruptcy and the birth of Monet’s second child, Michel in 1878, the two couples and their eight children decided to form a joint household in Vetheuil. However, Camille, who seemingly had a disease of the womb, died in the autumn of the next year. Alice Hoschede and Monet were to form an open, rather unconventional relationship that may have led to Monet’s gradual distancing from his Parisian painter friends and their exhibitions.
Though intimate, the couple lived largely autonomous lives. Although Ernest Hoschede had created a separate life for himself in the 1880s, Monet and Alice did not marry until after Ernest’s death in 1892. After a brief sojourn in Poissy, the family moved to their now famous house in Giverny. They rented this house until Monet was able to purchase it in 1890, due to a new-found affluence achieved in a large part by Durand-Ruel’s adept and financially rewarding cultivation of American collectors, interested in purchasing Monet’s works. The family were to spend the rest of their lives at Giverny.
With Alice caring for his children, Monet embarked on a period of frequent painting trips to picturesque corners of France throughout the 1880s. He returned several times to Normandy and Brittany coasts as he had always done, but now he chose to paint the remote sites rather than tourist filled resorts. The Parisians at play in Troutville and Ste-Adresse, celebrated in his canvas art of the 1860s gave way to the lonely tempest-tossed shores and rock pools of Fecamp and Pourville and the majestic isolation of the hilltop church at Varengeville in 1881 and 1882. He found a favourite motif in the dramatic cliffs and needles of Etretat. He returned there in 1883, 1885 and 1886, when he also painted many views of Belle-IIe off the southern coast of Brittany. In 1886, Monet also began to explore more distant regions within France and even the tulip fields of Holland. His life-long fascination with the cool light and coastal storms of the north was coupled with new explorations of the warm brilliance of the Mediterranean. He visited the south eastern tip of France, painting Bordighera, Antibes and Juan-les-Pins in 1884 and 1889.
The 1880s saw a shift of focus in Monet’s life on many levels, in the kind of subject matter he explored, the venues he selected for exhibiting his canvas art and the huge success and fame which he achieved. Like so many artists and writers at the end of the nineteenth century he became dissatisfied with the themes of modernity and urban experience. His art became much more focused on a world of personal sensation before the wonders of nature. A monumental decorative quality creeps in to his late canvas art works. Rather than the external spectacle that delighted Manet and Baudelaire, these paintings offer private spaces of contemplation which engulf the viewer in their gentle colour harmonies and bold compositions. These canvas arts achieve a world of escape and private reverie which was analogous to the artistic ambitions championed by the Symbolist painters and poets and Art Nouveau designers.
These new subjects not only widened Monet’s experience and modes of expression but also they attracted keen buyers and dealer-patrons. After the acceptance to the Salon of a canvas art of an ice flo in 1880, Monet embarked on a new cycle of one-man and group exhibitions with several of the leading private art dealers of the day. In 1883 Monet held a one-man show at the gallery of his old friend and supporter Durand-Ruel. He participated in the group shows organised by Georges Petit in 1885, 1886 and 1887. This relationship culminated in a retrospective of Monet’s work in 1889 which confirmed the popularity and sales of his work. On his return from the trips to Antibes, Monet also exhibited ten of his canvas art works with the dealers Boussod and Valadon, which their manager, Theo van Gogh, had purchased. Interestingly Monet ended this hugely successful exhibition by refusing one of the highest accolades from the French state, the Legion d’ honneur. Whilst rejecting honours for himself, he sought a place in the nation’s museums for his mentor, Manet by orchestrating a campaign of subscriptions to pay for the purchase of the famously scandalous and innovative painting of a Parisian courtesan, Olympia, of 1865.
The artistic explorations undertaken on Monet’s many painting trips of the 1880s were essentially preliminary work for his great series paintings of the 1890s. In the series he, Monet would select a particularly resonant site and subject, such as grain sticks, poplar trees on the River Epte or the facade of the Rouen Cathedral, and paint suites of paintings portraying the motif under various conditions of light and season. These series lay at the heart of Monet’s public exhibiting career in the last decade of the nineteenth century. In a one-man exhibition held in Durand-Ruel’s gallery in 1891, Monet included fifteen canvas art works from the grain stack series.
Claude Oscar Monet - The complete works by Claude Oscar Monet User comments, slideshow, biography, eCards, more than 1330 images of paintings and more!
Wall Art: – Buy with Confidence.
When we consider that art is about emotion and expression it is no surprise that we can achieve spectacular results with the careful placement of wall art. With wall art you can change the ambiance, mood and style of a room by creating a true reflection of your own personal style.
It is important to remember when choosing wall art that your own style is more important than fashion trends. Pick wall art that suits your personality that suits the purpose for which it was chosen. For example do you want sophistication? Are you trying to create the rustic look? Or do you prefer more traditional? Is it a conversation piece you are after, or a mood calmer? Whatever you desire you can be sure that Arts My Passion will have something to suit.
Our canvas art and oil paintings are painted to the highest standards by artists with at least fifteen years experience. We guarantee you won’t get better quality elsewhere. Whatever your room size, whatever your budget, whatever your style, Arts My Passion has it all.
Our wall art ranges from the modern day contemporary canvas art to the reproduction of traditional oil paintings by the great masters. We can produce custom sizes and custom artworks; our limits are infinite.
|
