The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life. (William Faulkner)
Symbolism was a late nineteenth-century art movement of French, Russian and Belgianorigin
in poetry and other arts. Symbolism in painting took its direction from
the poets and literary theorists of the movement, but it also represented a
reaction against the objectivist aims of Realism and the increasingly
influential movement of Impressionism. In contrast to the
relatively concrete representation these movements sought, Symbolist painters
favoured works based on fantasy and the imagination. Moreover, Symbolism can be seen as a revival of
some mystical tendencies in the Romantic tradition, and was close to the
self-consciously morbid and private decadent movement.
Paul Gauguin“Riders on the Beach”, (1902)
The symbolist painters used mythological and dream
imagery. The symbols used by
symbolism are not the familiar emblems of mainstream iconography but
intensely personal, private, obscure and ambiguous references. More a
philosophy than an actual style of art, symbolism in painting influenced the
contemporary Art Nouveau style and Les Nabis.
Mikhail Nesterov (May 31 [O.S. May 19] 1862, Ufa –
18 October 1942, Moscow) was a major representative of
religious Symbolism in Russian art. He
was a pupil of Pavel Tchistyakov at the Imperial Academy of
Arts, but later allied himself with the group of artists known as
the Peredvizhniki. His canvas The Vision of the Youth Bartholomew (1890–91),
depicting the conversion of medieval Russian saint Sergii Radonezhsky, is
often considered to be the earliest example of the Russian Symbolist style.
From 1890 to 1910,
Nesterov lived in Kiev and St Petersburg, working
on frescoes in St. Vladimir's Cathedral and the Church
on Spilt Blood, respectively. After 1910, he spent the remainder of his life
in Moscow, working in the Marfo-Mariinsky Convent. As a
devout Orthodox Christian, he did not accept the Bolshevik
Revolution but remained in Russia until his death, painting the portraits
of Ivan Ilyin, Ivan Pavlov, Ksenia Derzhinskaia, Otto Schmidt,
and Vera Mukhina, among others.
Mikhail Aleksandrovich Vrubel ( March 17, 1856 – April 14, 1910, all n.s.) is usually regarded amongst the Russian painters of the Symbolist movement. In reality, he deliberately stood aloof from contemporary art trends, so that the origin of his unusual manner should be sought in Late Byzantine and Early Renaissance painting.
Vrubel was born in Omsk, Russia, into a military lawyer's family. His father was of Polish ancestry (Polish: Wróbel), while his mother who was Danish died when he was three years old. And though he graduated from the Faculty of Law at St Petersburg University in 1880, his father had recognized his talent for art and had made sure to provide, through numerous tutors, what proved to be a sporadic education in the subject. The next year he entered the Imperial Academy of Arts, where he studied by direction of Pavel Chistyakov. Even in his earliest works, he exhibited great talent for drawing and an idiosyncratic style. He would later develop a penchant for fragmentary composition and an "unfinished touch".
In 1884, he was summoned to replace the lost 12th-century murals and mosaics in the St. Cyril's Church of Kiev with new ones. In order to execute this commission, he went to Venice to study medieval Christian art. It was here that, in the words of an art historian, "his palette acquired new strong saturated tones resembling the iridescent play of precious stones". Most of his works painted in Venice have been lost, because the artist was more interested in creative process than in promoting his artwork.
In 1886, he returned to Kiev, where he submitted some designs to the newly-built St Volodymir Cathedral. The jury, however, failed to appreciate the novelty of his works, and they were rejected. At that period, he executed some illustrations for Hamlet and Anna Karenina which had little in common with his later Demon and Prophet themes.
In 1905 he created the mosaics of the hotel "Metropol" in Moscow, of which the centre piece of the facade overlooking Teatralnaya Ploschad is occupied by the mosaic panel, 'Princess Gryoza' (Princess of Dream).
While in Kiev, Vrubel started painting sketches and watercolours illustrating the Demon, a long Romantic poem by Mikhail Lermontov. The poem described the carnal passion of "an eternal nihilistic spirit" to a Georgian girl Tamara. At that period Vrubel developed a keen interest in Oriental arts, and particularly Persian carpets, and even attempted to imitate their texture in his paintings.
In 1890, Vrubel relocated to Moscow where he could best follow the burgeoning innovations and trends in art. Like other artists associated with the Art Nouveau style, he excelled not only in painting but also in applied arts, such as ceramics, majolics, and stained glass. He also produced architectural masks, stage sets, and costumes.
It is the large painting of Seated Demon (1890) that brought notoriety to Vrubel. Most conservative critics accused him of "wild ugliness", whereas the art patron Savva Mamontov praised the Demon series as "fascinating symphonies of a genius" and commissioned Vrubel to paint decorations for his private opera and mansions of his friends. Unfortunately the Demon, like other Vrubel's works, doesn't look as it did when it was painted, as the artist added bronze powder to his oils in order to achieve particularly luminous, glistening effects.
During 1896, he met the famous opera singer Nadezhda Zabela. Half a year later they married and settled in Moscow, where Zabela was invited by Mamontov to perform in his private opera theatre. While in Moscow, Vrubel designed stage sets and costumes for his wife, who sang the parts of the Snow Maiden, the Swan Princess, and Princess Volkhova in Rimsky-Korsakov's operas. Using Russian fairy tales, he executed some of his most acclaimed pieces, including Pan (1899), The Swan Princess (1900), and Lilacs (1900).
In 1901, Vrubel returned to the demonic themes in the large canvas Demon Downcast. In order to astound the public with a spiritual message, he repeatedly repainted the demon's ominous face, even after the painting had been exhibited to the overwhelmed audience. At the end he had a severe nervous breakdown and was hospitalized in a mental clinic. Vrubel's mental illness was initiated or complicated by tertiary syphilis.While there, he painted a mystical Pearl Oyster (1904) and variations on the themes of Alexander Pushkin's poem The Prophet. In 1906, overpowered by mental disease and approaching blindness, he ceased painting. Vrubel died on April 14, 1910.
A size of the picture is 100x130 cm, so it looks very impressive. This picture is an allegory of the death of the Artist's wife. This fact is displayed very vividly in the picture. Viewers can see the artist's pain and torment through composition, colours and subject matter's image. The subject of the painting is the oak riven by lightning. It is depicted very expressively, a violent storm bends its firm branches and the lighting breaks its trunk in half. Dark and cold colours predominate here: dark oak, grey waves breaking on the black rocks and a lavish use of black, grey and brown in the background. The only bright line dividing the picture space nearly diagonally is the lighting. It personifies a sudden and dazzle blow for the artist. This is his wife's death. Speaking about composition, it is slightly asymmetrical. The oak is placed in the right side, and the left side represents a solid black area of storm. In the lower right-hahd conner a viewer can see rocks and waves. The whole picture creates a very depressing and oppressive impression. Looking at the picture we can feel that artist was hard hit and his statement of deep depression.
Impressionism can be considered the first distinctly modern movement in painting. Developing in Paris in the 1860s, its influence spread throughout Europe and eventually the United States. Its originators were artists who rejected the official, government-sanctioned exhibitions, or salons, and were consequently shunned by powerful academic art institutions. In turning away from the fine finish and detail to which most artists of their day aspired, the Impressionists aimed to capture the momentary, sensory effect of a scene - the impression objects made on the eye in a fleeting instant. To achieve this effect, many Impressionist artists moved from the studio to the streets and countryside, painting en plein air.
Key Ideas Impressionism was a style of representational art that did not necessarily rely on realistic depictions. Scientific thought at the time was beginning to recognize that what the eye perceived and what the brain understood were two different things. The Impressionists sought to capture the former - the optical effects of light - to convey the passage of time, changes in weather, and other shifts in the atmosphere in their canvases. The Impressionists loosened their brushwork and lightened their palettes to include pure, intense colors. They abandoned traditional linear perspective and avoided the clarity of form that had previously served to distinguish the more important elements of a picture from the lesser ones. For this reason, many critics faulted Impressionist paintings for their unfinished appearance and seemingly amateurish quality. Impressionism records the effects of the massive mid-nineteenth-century renovation of Paris led by civic planner Georges-Eugène Haussmann, which included the city's newly constructed railway stations; wide, tree-lined boulevards that replaced the formerly narrow, crowded streets; and large, deluxe apartment buildings. Often focusing on scenes of public leisure - especially scenes of cafes and cabarets - the Impressionists conveyed the new sense of alienation experienced by the inhabitants of the first modern metropolis.
John Constable was born on the 11th of June in 1776.
He was an English Romantic painter. His mother town is Suffolk.Although he is known primarily as a landscape
painter, Constable was quite accomplished as a portrait artist as well. John Constable died on the 31st of March in 1837.
"I should paint my own places best", he wrote to his friend John Fisher in 1821, "painting is but another word for feeling".
Constable quietly rebelled against the artistic culture that taught artists to use their imagination to compose their pictures rather than nature itself. Although Constable produced paintings throughout his life for the "finished" picture market of patrons and R.A. exhibitions, constant refreshment in the form of on-the-spot studies was essential to his working method. He was never satisfied with following a formula. "The world is wide", he wrote, "no two days are alike, nor even two hours; neither were there ever two leaves of a tree alike since the creation of all the world; and the genuine productions of art, like those of nature, are all distinct from each other."
Constable painted many full-scale preliminary sketches of his landscapes in order to test the composition in advance of finished pictures. These large sketches, with their free and vigorous brushwork, were revolutionary at the time, and they continue to interest artists, scholars and the general public.
Constable's watercolours were also remarkably free for their time: the almost mystical Stonehenge, 1835, with its double rainbow, is often considered to be one of the greatest watercolours ever painted. When he exhibited it in 1836, Constable appended a text to the title: "The mysterious monument of Stonehenge, standing remote on a bare and boundless heath, as much unconnected with the events of past ages as it is with the uses of the present, carries you back beyond all historical records into the obscurity of a totally unknown period."
In addition to the full-scale oil sketches, Constable completed numerous observational studies of landscapes and clouds, determined to become more scientific in his recording of atmospheric conditions. The power of his physical effects was sometimes apparent even in the full-scale paintings which he exhibited in London.
To the sky studies he added notes, often on the back of the sketches, of the prevailing weather conditions, direction of light, and time of day, believing that the sky was "the key note, the standard of scale, and the chief organ of sentiment" in a landscape painting.
Constable's best artworks:
Wivenhoe-Park, Essex (1816)
His Wife Maria Bicknell (1816) The Hay Wain (1821)
The painter John Constable was born on June 11, 1776 in East Bergholt,
Suffolk. Until 1799 he worked in the shop of his father, Golding
Constable, but then entered the Royal Academy in London, where he became
a student of Joseph Farington. He was strongly influenced by Jacob van
Ruisdael and Claude Lorrain, before he found his own style of painting,
based on the immediate observation of nature.
In spite of his
studies at the academy, John Constable largely remained self-taught. In
1802 Constable had his first exhibition in London. That same year, he
bought a studio in his home town. In 1809 he met his future wife, Maria
Bricknell, the daughter of a civil servant. In 1816, one year after his
mother's death, Constable married Maria Bricknell, with whom he had 7
children. John Constable was particularly interested in landscape
paintings, in which he tried to capture the phenomena and the
variability of nature.
Initially, John Constable's paintings only
seemed to meet with little interest in England. After he had
participated in the Paris Salon, however, they became very successful in
France. Constable's picture "The Hay Wain", which was shown at the
Paris Salon, for example, influenced Delacroix's palette.
With an
animated brush stroke and spatula, John Constable tried to capture the
atmosphere of the moment, thereby anticipating the Impressionists'
interpretation of nature. In 1824 John Constable even received a gold
medal from the French king. Among his most important works are "Malvern
Hall" (1809) and "The Cornfield" (1826). Constable's series of
watercolors are also very famous.
John Constable is regarded as the
most important English landscape painter of the 19th century, at a par
with William Turner. On November 23, 1828, Maria died from tuberculosis
at the age of 41.
John Constable died unexpectedly in the night of March 31, 1837
A portrait of Maria Bicknell
painted in 1816 by John Constable
Constable Country is a small
area along the valley of the river Stour consisting of East Bergholt, Flatford
and Stratford St Mary on the Suffolk side and Dedham and Langham on the Essex
side. Throughout his life Constable kept returning to scenes he loved around
this small area. To this day much of the countryside would easily be recognised
by Constable, and at Flatford, (now owned by the National Trust), the sites of
seven of his major paintings can be located with precision. One problem with
seeing the views is that there are far more trees today than there were 200
years ago!
Constable painted a number
of pictures from the top of the hill by Langham Church, usually looking along
the Stour Valley. Some of these paintings
are:
Painted in about 1800 this shows the view towards Stratford St Mary
This was called The Glebe Farm and was painted in 1830
The Vale of
Dedham, 1828, shows Dedham Church in the middle distance and Harwich in the far
distance
In
many of Constable’s paintings barges appear on the river and they were a major
feature of the river 200 years ago. Following an Act of Parliament in 1705 the
Stour had been made navigable from the coast, at Manningtree, up to Sudbury.
The main purpose of the barge traffic was to take coal up to Sudbury returning
with bricks and agricultural produce from the mills. The Stour Navigation was
very successful during the late 18th century and early 19th century but after
the coming of the railways it declined although it did continue until the first
World War. The picture above is a good example of the Constable's attention to
detail and his very accurate presentation of trees, sky and the posture of the
people.
Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841–1919) was a French artist who was a
leading painter in the development of the Impressionist style. As a
celebrator of beauty, and especially feminine sensuality, it has been said that
"Renoir is the final representative of a tradition which runs directly
from Rubens to Watteau."
Pierre-Auguste Renoir was born in Limoges, France, on
February 25th, 1841. He began painting at the age of 13 when he
found a job as a porcelain painter in a Parisian factory, creating flower
designs on China.
In around 1860, Renoir joined
the studio of the Swiss artist Charles Gleyre and met fellow students Monet,
Bazille, and Sisley, all of whom went on to lead the Impressionist movement. In
1869 Renoir spent time sketching with Monet on the Seine river banks and it was
during this time that they developed the famous technique and bright colors
that defined the Impressionist movement. Like many artists, Renoir endured
difficulties in his early career, but turned this around as a portraitist in
the late 1870s.
In 1881 Renoirs trip to Italy
opened his eyes to the works of Raphael, Velazquez, and Rubens and afterwards
he was keen to experiment with a more traditional style. His later paintings,
including The Umbrellas, are evidently more
linear. Renoirs subjects also shifted from contemporary themes to more timeless
ones, particularly nudes.
After marrying Aline Charigot
in 1890, Renoir welcomed three sons into the world between 1885 and 1901:
Pierre, Jean, and Claude. In 1887, he completed a series of works of a group of
nude female figures known as The Bathers. He continued painting until the end
of his life and even took up sculpture despite suffering from rheumatism.
Renoir died On December 3rd 1919 at his house in Cagne, aged seventy-eight.
Pierre-Auguste Renoir Style and
Technique
Renoir´s paintings are easily
identifiable by their use of bright colors and bold lines. Experimenting with a
more classical style in his later years, Renoir developed his own technique
which fused his trademark sunny, optimistic outlook with bold, contrasting
lines.
Renoir´s early works captured
real life scenarios and his themes were always pleasant and non-serious. A
master at depicting facial expressions, Renoir tended to paint youthful
portraits of his associates, most of whom were artists and writers.It´s believed that Renoir used just five colors in
his palette and his time as a porcelain painter taught him how to successfully
combine different colors. Impressionism was very much defined by its use of
light colors and it was a style based on quick brush strokes, but a
trip to Italy introduced Renoir to the work of the Renaissance artists Raphael,
Velazquez, and Rubens and this inspired him to change his technique and
experiment with a more decorative and traditional style. Consequently, his
subsequent paintings became more linear.
Towards
the end of his career, Renoir´s style changed again and he opted for stronger
colors - often reds and oranges - and thick brush strokes. The female nude was
a favorite subject and he depicted details of the scene through freely-brushed
spots of color which fused his figures and their surroundings.
Edgar Degas (1834-1917) was a French artist famous for his paintings, sculptures, prints, and drawings. Degas seems never to have reconciled himself to the label of "Impressionist," preferring to call himself a "Realist" or "Independent." Nevertheless, he was one of the group’s founders, an organizer of its exhibitions, and one of its most important core members. Like the Impressionists, he sought to capture fleeting moments in the flow of modern life, yet he showed little interest in painting plein air landscapes, favoring scenes in theaters and cafés illuminated by artificial light, which he used to clarify the contours of his figures, adhering to his Academic training.
He is especially identified with the subject of dance; more than half of his works depict dancers. He was a superb draftsman, and particularly masterful in depicting movement, as can be seen in his renditions of dancers, racecourse subjects and female nudes. His portraits are notable for their psychological complexity and for their portrayal of human isolation.
Degas' Techniques:
Degas would endlessly experiment with unusual techniques. He would sometimes mix his pastel so heavily with liquid fixative that it became amalgamated into a sort of paste. He would do a drawing in charcoal and use layers of pastel to cover part of this. He would combine pastels and oil in a single work. He would even pass through a press a heavily pigmented charcoal drawing in order to transfer the excess of pigment onto a new sheet so as to make an inverse proof of the original. In his monotypes he used etching in a new way: he inked the unetched plate and drew with a brush in this layer of ink; then he removed all the ink in places to obtain strong contrasts of light and dark or painterly effects in this printing medium. Thus, in a variety of ways Degas succeeded in obtaining a richness of surface effects.
In the 1880s, when his eyesight began to fail, Degas began increasingly to work in two new media that did not require intense visual acuity: sculpture and pastel. In his sculpture, as in his paintings, he attempted to catch the action of the moment, and his ballet dancers and female nudes are depicted in poses that make no attempt to conceal their subjects' physical exertions.
His pastels are usually simple compositions containing only a few figures. He was obliged to depend on vibrant colors and meaningful gestures rather than on precise lines and careful detailing, but, in spite of such limitations, these works are eloquent and expressive and have a simple grandeur unsurpassed by any of his other works.
Claude Monet ( 14 November 1840 - 5 December 1926) is one of the most well-known and
representative figures in impressionism. Monet was a French painter who worked
throughout the latter half of the 19th century and until his death in 1926.
Monet's work is characterized by his interest in color and nature. His
paintings feature the same subject at different times of day.
Impressionism
The
primary characteristic of Monet's work is his commitment to impressionism its
basic characteristics, such as a focus on texture, light and brushstroke.
Monet's focus changed from the subject (such as a boat, landscape or person) to
the way that paint works on a canvas. Monet's art seeks to capture what the eye
sees and the dynamic change of landscape depending on perspective and light.
Nature
Monet's
work primarily focuses on scenes in nature. Even in his early work, which
featured human forms, the natural world received as much attention as the human
figures. His most famous paintings, such as his haystack series and water
lilies, are exclusively depictions of nature. Monet also had a lifelong
interest in water, which he painted in all its forms, from turbulent rivers to
the placid surface of his own lily pond.
Use of Color
Monet's
paintings are distinctive in that he did not use the traditional chiaroscuro
method, which creates a three-dimensional effect using shadow and light.
Instead, Monet used unbroken blocks of color in unexpected ways to create
vibrant, but flat landscapes. For Monet and other impressionists, color was not
intrinsic to an object, but instead determined by the quality of light thrown
on it. Monet also avoided distinctive lines in his painting, instead using dots
and patches of color to indicate forms.
Repeating images
Monet
is also well-known for his repeated paintings of the same object at different
times of day, reflecting the changes of color and light. One of his best-known
series is of haystacks in a field, painted throughout a day and over several
days in different qualities of light. Monet also painted series' of poplar
trees and the Rouen Cathedral. Toward the end of his life, Monet devoted his
time completely to painting his own lily pond throughout the year.
The best works.
This painting of “Camille” (“The Woman in the
Green Dress”), features Claude Monet’s young wife in a full-length portrait.
The painting was done in haste, with a Salon deadline looming, but it gained
great attention for the then-struggling artist.
Water
Lilies is a series of approximately 250 oil paintings by Claude The paintings
depict Monet's flower garden at Giverny and were the main focus of Monet's
artistic production during the last thirty years of his life. Many of the works
were painted while Monet suffered from cataracts.
The
Woman in the Green Dress is my favourite picture of this particular painter. I
like it most of all, because The woman is dressed in a dress striped in green
and black, with a train and of a rather light fabric - that looks like silk,
but considering the financial situation in which it was painted it is not that
likely the original was made in.
Claude Oscar Monet, the leader and
most prominent figure in movement whose name come from Monet's "
impression sunrise. He was born on November 14, 1840 in Paris, France. Claude
Monet left around 500 sketches, more than 2000 paintings and 2,700 letters to
the world. His Footprints from Paris Street to the Eastern Mediterranean coast,
from France to London, Venice, Norway, traveling and painting, left numerous
works to the coming generations.Most famous pantings by Claude Monet include
The impression • Sunrise, The Notre Dame series of Rouen, the water lilies
series, the poppies near PRees devtheuil.
Monet and
several other artists experimented with a method of putting paint on the canvas
without blending the colors. He would get the paint directly from the tube
without mixing it on his palette first. Brush strokes and dabs of color would
be placed side by side. Monet called it the "division of colours".
When you stepped back from the canvas, your eyes would blend the colors
together. This was not the traditional method of painting, and many people
rejected their works.
Water-Lilies,
Setting Sun
Of all Monet's
series, the one depicting his water-lily pond in his garden at Giverny in
Normandy occupied him for longest and produced the largest number of canvases.
In this work, the pink and yellow rays of the setting sun are reflected in the
still water, along with the overhanging branches of a weeping willow. Lily pads
drift across the water's surface. Monet still had this painting in his studio
in 1923 when he sold it to a dealer with a number of other works. About to
undergo a cataract operation, he asked to keep this particular work for a while
longer, perhaps in order to look at it, or even work at it with renewed vision.
The Thames below
Westminster
This is one of
the works produced by Monet when, like Pissarro and Daubigny, he moved to
London during the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1). Pissarro worked mainly in south
London, while Monet painted the parks of central London and the River Thames.
Here he shows the misty atmosphere of the capital on a spring day, with the
Houses of Parliament and Westminster Bridge in the background. They are
contrasted with the jetty in the foreground casting broken shadows on the
river, and the new foliage of the trees on the Embankment to the right.
Daubigny's 1873 painting, 'St Paul's from the Surrey Side', conveys a similar
impression of the Thames, but puts more emphasis on the industrial nature of
the river.
The Water-Lily
Pond
In 1883 Monet
moved from the north-west of Paris to Giverny where he lived until his death.
Adjacent to his property was a small pond which he acquired in 1893, where he
created a water garden with an arched bridge in the Japanese style. In 1900 he
exhibited a series of ten canvases of the pond, showing a single subject in
differing light conditions. He worked on similar series representing poplars,
haystacks and the façade of Rouen Cathedral during the same period. The simple
design of this painting with the close-up view of the bridge was repeated in
several other canvases. The fresh greens of the foliage evoke an early summer's
days.
Claude
Monet (14 November 1840 – 5 December 1926) was a founder of French
impressionist painting, and the most consistent and prolific practitioner of
the movement's philosophy of expressing one's perceptions before nature,
especially as applied to plein-air landscape painting.
Claude
Monet was born in Paris, France on November 14, 1840. He was the second child
of Louise-Justine Aubry and Claude Adolphe Monet. In 1845, the Monet family
settled near the ocean in Ingouville, France.
In 1851,
Claude began attending school. He studied many subjects including art. When he
was a young teenager it became apparent he had artistic ability. Claude would
draw caricatures of his teachers on his schoolwork. Claude soon began to charge
people to draw their caricatures and was able to make a steady income.
Claude's
mother died on January 28, 1857. The Monet family soon moved to Le Havre,
France. A year later the young artist met landscape painter Eugene-Louis
Boudin, a mentor who first introduced Claude to Plein Air (outdoor) painting.
In 1860
Monet was drafted into the military and sent to Algeria. During these years of
service Monet did not paint at all. Upon his return to Paris he picked up where
he left off and began painting again. Monet also met Camille Doncieux in Paris,
and then married her in 1870. Camille modeled for many of his paintings.
Monet
became known as an "Impressionist" - a title derived from his
painting, "Impression, Sunrise ". The work has an unfinished look,
which was very different from the paintings of artists who lived before him.
The brush strokes were lively and spontaneous, capturing the feeling of the
moment. He said, "Landscape is nothing but an impression, and an
instantaneous one, hence this label that was given us, by the way because of
me."
Claude
Monet, Impression, soleil levant
Claude
Monet, The Cliff at Étretat after the Storm, 1885
Claude
Monet, Woman with a Parasol, (Camille and Jean Monet), 1875
In his
later works Monet continued to capture the affect of light. Sometimes he would
paint the same object over and over again, but at different times of day or
year. Examples of these works include his haystacks, morning views of the
Seine, the Gare Saint-Lazare, Poplars, the Thames, Rouen Cathedral, and his
celebrated series of water lilies.
Claude
Monet died in Giverny, France on December 5, 1926. It took many years for
people to appreciate his work. Today, the art of Monet is an inspiration to
many artists around the world.
Warm and peaceful colors help the
artist to express a hot, summer day. Only cool wind, which waves the sea and
the flags, saves people from heat. Brightness and depth of colors vivify the
picture and arrest sight. The composition is horizontal; the lines of the
sea and the border make such impression. Peaceful is felt in each flower and
people’s poses. People with their belonging to the upper-class society add to
the picture the notes of aristocracy. The elements of the painting have
been placed specially to make us pay attention on the front part and see
harmonious colors and then into the distance where the sea and the sky relax an
eye. Freshness and beauty of the painting impress me and make me want to be
there. Claude Monet represented a wonderful afternoon with all its calm,
peaceful, and warm atmosphere.
