Claude Monet

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Born: 1840

Died: 1926

Color Theory: Past vs. Present

November 20, 2024

Summary of Claude Monet

The French Impressionist movement was founded by Claude Monet, who gave the movement its name. He was instrumental in bringing its devotees together as an inspirational talent and personality. Monet, who was interested in painting outdoors and capturing natural light, would eventually take the method to one of its most renowned peaks with his series of paintings, in which he documented his views of the same subject at various times of the day in many sequences. His later work often achieved a remarkable degree of abstraction, which has recommended him to subsequent generations of abstract painters. He was a master colourist and painter of light and atmosphere, and his later work often achieved a remarkable degree of abstraction, which has recommended him to subsequent generations of abstract painters.

Monet experimented with free handling, strong colour, and stunningly unusual compositions, inspired in part by Édouard Manet. He strayed from the unambiguous portrayal of forms and linear perspective, which were dictated by the established art of the period. In his paintings, the emphasis changed away from showing individuals and toward expressing various characteristics of light and mood in each subject.

Monet grew increasingly attentive to the ornamental aspects of colour and shape in his final years. He started applying paint in smaller strokes, building up large fields of colour and experimenting with the possibilities of a beautiful paint surface of colour harmonies and contrasts. The results he created, especially in the 1890s series paintings, constitute a significant step toward abstraction and a contemporary painting focused only on surface effects.

He was instrumental in persuading Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley, Édouard Manet, and Camille Pissarro to work together in and around Paris as an inspiration and a leader among the Impressionists. Between 1874 to 1886, he was also instrumental in creating the exhibition society that would highlight the group’s work.

Childhood

Oscar Claude Monet was born in Paris and relocated to Le Havre, a coastal town in northern France, when he was five years old. His father was a wealthy grocer who moved into shipping later in life. When he was 15, his mother died. Early on, he was captivated by the water and rocky coastline of Northern France, and he would frequently skip school to go on walks along the cliffs and beaches. He was taught at the College du Havre by a former student of the great Neo-Classical artist Jacques-Louis David when he was a child. From an early age, he was creative and entrepreneurial, drawing caricatures in his leisure time and selling them for 20 francs each.

Early Life

In 1856, Monet met Eugéne Boudin, a landscape painter known for his paintings of northern French seaside villages, and their friendship became important. Boudin pushed him to paint outside, and the en plein air method altered Monet’s perception of how art might be made: “It was as if a veil had been ripped from my eyes; I had realised. I had a clear understanding of what painting might entail.”

Despite being denied a scholarship, Monet travelled to Paris in 1859 to study with the aid of his family. Instead of enrolling at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts to pursue the more traditional career route of a Salon painter, Monet enrolled in the more avant-garde Académie Suisse, where he met fellow artist Camille Pissarro.

Mid Life

Monet was compelled to serve in the military and was sent to Algiers in 1861. The north African atmosphere invigorated Monet, as it had Eugène Delacroix before him, and influenced his creative and personal attitude. Johan Jongkind, a Dutch landscape and marine artist, offered his “final education of the eye” when he returned to Le Havre following his duty. Following this, Monet returned to Paris and studied in the workshop of Swiss artist Charles Gleyre, where he met future Impressionists such as Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Frédéric Bazille, and Alfred Sisley.

Two of Monet’s seascapes were selected for display at the Paris Salon in 1865. However, the artist felt constrained by working in a studio and preferred his prior experience of painting in nature, so he relocated to the Fontainebleau forest, just outside of Paris. His ambitiously huge Women in the Garden (1866-67) was a culmination of the concepts and themes in his earlier work, using his future wife, Camille Doncieux, as his single model. Monet hoped that the painting would be accepted into the Paris Salon, but his personality clashed with the jury, and the painting was rejected, leaving the artist heartbroken.

In 1870, Monet sought sanctuary in London to avoid the Franco-Prussian War, and he painted numerous views in the city, including Westminster Bridge (1871). He was joined by his wife and their new newborn child, Jean. He viewed the paintings of John Constable and J.M.W. Turner at London museums, and their romantic realism obviously impacted his use of light. He met Paul Durand-Ruel, who operated a new contemporary art gallery on Bond Street, and that was the most significant thing. Durand-Ruel was a strong supporter of Monet and Pissarro, as well as Renoir, Degas, and other Impressionists in France.

After the war, Monet and his family returned to France and resided in Argenteuil, a suburb of Paris on the Seine River. Over the next six years, he refined his approach and painted over 150 canvases to chronicle the changes in the developing town. Renoir and Manet, among others, were drawn to his presence in Paris. Despite the fact that Manet was ten years older and had established himself as an artist considerably earlier than Monet, by the 1870s, both had a considerable effect on the other, and by 1874, Monet had successfully converted Manet to plein air painting.

At 1874, Monet and his friends staged their own show in the vacant studio of photographer and caricaturist Nadar, as part of their ongoing protest against the salon system. The first Impressionist exhibition was held at this location. Renoir, Degas, and Pissarro, among others, were among the first painters to respond collectively to the changes in their city. The larger boulevards needed to suit the increasing styles of public life and increased flow of consumption reflected Paris’ modernity. Not only was their subject matter novel, but so was the manner they depicted this reality.

Despite having a middle-class upbringing, Monet’s expensive preferences caused him to spend most of his life in various states of poverty and debt. His paintings did not provide him with a sufficient income, and he frequently had to borrow money from acquaintances. Monet had some financial success in the 1870s after getting numerous commissions, but he was in severe difficulties by the end of the decade.

With Alice Hoschede and her six children, the Monet family was residing in Vetheuil in 1877. The Hoschede family were long-time friends and supporters of Monet’s art, but the husband’s company failed, and he abandoned his family. As a result, Monet needed to locate a cheap home for his large family. In 1878, Camille gave birth to their second son, Michel. However, with Camille’s death a year and a half later, Monet’s work began to shift, with a greater emphasis on the flux of experiencing time and the mediating influences of atmosphere and personality on subject matter. In 1892, Alice continued to live with Monet and became his second wife (after Ernest Hoschede passed away)

In 1883, Monet and Alice were seeking for a home for their (total) eight children. He came upon a house in the quiet village of Giverny, which had a population of 300 people. In 1890, he fell in love with a house and garden that he was able to rent and then purchase (and substantially enlarge). For the last three decades of his life, Monet’s major source of inspiration was the Giverny estate. He designed a Japanese garden with a pond filled with water lilies and an arching bridge for contemplation and relaxation. “My garden is my most beautiful masterpiece,” he famously stated. I am constantly and lovingly working on my garden.

At Giverny, Monet had his greatest triumph. His paintings began to sell in the United States, England, and the United Kingdom, as well as locally. He grew into a gentleman, with a big crew in his home, including six gardeners who looked after his beautiful garden and lily pond.

In his paintings, Monet was more interested with mood and surroundings than with modernism. When his series of grainstacks, painted at various times throughout the day, was displayed at Durand-gallery, Ruel’s it earned great acclaim from critics, purchasers, and the general public. He next shifted his attention to Rouen Cathedral, where he conducted comparable research on the effects of shifting mood, light, and atmosphere on the facade at various times of the day. The outcome was a visual record of accumulated perceptions in the shape of dozens of paintings of vivid, somewhat exaggerated hues.

Late Life

In the end, Monet chose to be alone with nature, painting, rather than engage in theoretical or critical debates within the Parisian creative and cultural milieu. In the 1880s and 1890s, he went to locations including London, Venice, Norway, and France, but in 1908, he stayed in Giverny for the rest of his life. Their second wife Alice died in 1911, and his son Jean died the following year. Monet largely stopped painting after being shattered by these tragedies, the ravages of World War I, and even a cataract developing over one of his eyes.

At the time, French leader Georges Clemenceau, who also happened to be Monet’s friend, commissioned Monet to produce an artwork to help the country recover from the Great War’s melancholy. At first, Monet said he was too old and unqualified for the job, but Clemenceau finally lifted him out of his grief by urging him to produce a magnificent work of art, which he dubbed “the great decoration” As a world inside a universe, Monet imagined a continuous succession of waterscapes set in an oval salon. For this reason, a new studio was erected with a glass wall facing the garden, and despite having cataracts (one of which was surgically removed), Monet was able to move a movable easel around the studio to capture the ever-changing light and perspective of his water lilies. He worked on his water paintings all the way to the end of his life.

Monet’s water lilies were eventually housed in two eliptical chambers erected within the Orangerie museum. The all-over compositions of the paintings and the constructed chambers gave the impression that the observer was floating in the water, surrounded by greenery. Many commentators praised the final work, which was dubbed “the Sistine Chapel of Impressionism” by the Surrealist writer and artist Andre Masson.

Famous Art by Claude Monet

Westminster Bridge (aka The Thames below Westminster)

1871

Monet’s Westminster Bridge, painted on the Embankment in London during his stay as a wartime refugee, is one of the greatest examples of his work. The horizontal bridge, the boats drifting on the waves, and the vertical dock and staircase in the foreground balance this basic, asymmetrical composition. A layer of mist including violet, gold, pink, and green covers the whole landscape, producing a thick atmosphere that portrays the structures in distant, fuzzy forms.

The Rue Montorgueil in Paris. Celebration of June 30th, 1878

1878

Historians and scientists think Monet stumbled upon vision and optics breakthroughs. Professor Ian Aaronson believes that Monet has hyper-sensitive visual talents, allowing him to detect details that other people would overlook. If one looks at the way the flags are painted in this piece, for example, they appear to be extremely fuzzy and indistinct. However, while looking down at the audience, the flags appear to wave in the viewer’s peripheral vision (best to try this on the real painting, not a reproduction). Monet appears to have discovered numerous peculiarities of eyesight and artistic effects that were not adequately proven by science for many years after his death, as in this case.

Water Lilies

1915-1926

Monet’s water landscape series, which he began working on in the late 1890s, includes the Nymphéas cycle. According to the website of the Musée de l’Orangerie, the term nymphéa derives from the Greek word numphé, which means nymph, and is named after a Classical storey that credits the flower’s origin to a nymph who was dying of love for Hercules. It’s also the scientific name for a water lily.

This series occupied Monet until his death 30 years later, and it consists of hundreds of canvases that create a panorama of water, lilies, and sky in his studio, which was inspired by his Giverny garden. The eight huge panels of Water Lillies that are located in two eliptical chambers of the L’Orangerie museum in Paris are the most famous of this series.

Monet explains his project’s objectives: “Consider a circular chamber with a horizon of water dotted with these plants on all four corners. Transparent walls, sometimes green, sometimes mauve in colour. The water’s stillness and tranquilly match the blossoming show; the tones are hazy, delectably subtle, and as light as a dream.”

The final installation is regarded as one of Monet’s, Impressionism’s, and even twentieth-century art’s crowning achievements. The museum’s lighting and setting enhances the viewer’s experience adjacent to these paintings, creating a “illusion of an endless whole, of a wave with no horizon and no shore” as Monet put it. Many painters would be influenced by these works, but the all-over composition would notably inspire The New York School’s Abstract Expressionist large-scale canvases.

BULLET POINTED (SUMMARISED)

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The French Impressionist movement was founded by Claude Monet, who gave the movement its name.

He was instrumental in bringing its devotees together as an inspirational talent and personality.
Monet, who was interested in painting outdoors and capturing natural light, would eventually take the method to one of its most renowned peaks with his series of paintings, in which he documented his views of the same subject at various times of the day in many sequences.
His later work often achieved a remarkable degree of abstraction, which has recommended him to subsequent generations of abstract painters.

He was a master colourist and painter of light and atmosphere, and his later work often achieved a remarkable degree of abstraction, which has recommended him to subsequent generations of abstract painters.
Monet experimented with free handling, strong colour, and stunningly unusual compositions, inspired in part by Édouard Manet.
He strayed from the unambiguous portrayal of forms and linear perspective, which were dictated by the established art of the period.

In his paintings, the emphasis changed away from showing individuals and toward expressing various characteristics of light and mood in each subject.
He was instrumental in persuading Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley, Édouard Manet, and Camille Pissarro to work together in and around Paris as an inspiration and a leader among the Impressionists.
Between 1874 to 1886, he was also instrumental in creating the exhibition society that would highlight the group’s work.