Learn About Claude Monet in Art History, View His Art and Famous Paintings
"La Gare-Saint Lazare”, Claude Monet, 1868-9
Claude Monet, 1840-1926, one of France’s famous artists in art history, painted the " Red
Boats at
Argenteuil", in 1875. Impressionism is a style of art, a system or technique using
patches
of paint to represent forms in nature, not detailing objects, as they truly exist
in nature.
Impressionism is not a study of light, it is another and different art system or
method used
to represent form and light just as a realist uses smoothed, gradiated paint to
represent
light and forms in nature. Both are legitimate forms of expression in art.
In one of Claude Monet's famous art paintings "Red Boats
at Argenteuil" the water is painted in
quick patches of varying values of blue instead of one solid mass of blue
representing water in traditional method of art painting.
The strokes of reflection in general, and
the
strokes of reflection in particular from the boats, are intermingled with the blue
strokes
of the water, sometimes in mass, blocking out the blue, and other times thinned
out as
reflection dissipates around the edges.
Light, in Monet's "Red Boats at Argenteuil", is represented by color and color values.
A yellow
in the largest boat has lavender added within the yellow as it reaches the
waterline .The
key in representing shadow for Monet here is using a different color or hue close
to the
same value as the yellow, but a bit darker. The lavender becomes the shadow of
yellow
even though lavender is not a part of yellow. This example is not a study of light
it is a
study of color and color values representing light and shadow.
The strokes of paint
representing the boat’s reflection, are intermingled with these blue strokes
giving the impression of the boats reflection on water. Where the boats reflection
is heavily saturated on the water the blue water strokes disappear entirely, and
as the boats reflection thins and vanishes into the water the quantity of quick
strokes representing the boats reflection also thins and dissipates back into blue
strokes.
Impressionism art seems to work best when the eye and brain can't comprehend
the
details
of what is being viewed. In Claude Monet's art painting, "Spring Trees by the Lake"
1888,
Impression works because the eye can't possibly see all the individual leaves and
branches.
The eye and brain can't compute or comprehend the ever-changing values
of
light and reflective colors in the water, but it can when facing large static
broad close in
areas.
In Monet's many famous paintings studying light in art history, in particular
the "Rouen Cathedral" 1894, Impressionism, and it's
patchworks of color doesn't seem to work. The eye and brain can comprehend the
detail of the
greater
surface area, mainly because one closer to the large surface area.
Claude Monet's own garden was perfect subject matter for his art and
loosening
style in the latter1990's due to the varying values of
color in the
water, and water reflections. In his loosing style water, air, light and all
substances began to fuse together without linear boundary.
In Claude Monet's large art painting of "Water lilies",
1925, he paints with longer, more
sweeping
strokes, where the strokes themselves have more relationship to each other than
they do to
the
objects they represent.
Other famous artists of Impressionism in art history are Renoir, Sisley, Van Gogh and
Seurat.
Click on the graphics below to increase graphic sizes. At the same you time can also view an opportunity to purchase a poster or painting reproduction.
To view gallery 1 of Claude Monet posters click here.
To view gallery 2, of giclee’ reproductions click here.
