MONET

Oscar-Claude Monet (1840 – 926) was the most consistent and prolific practitioner ofImpressionism and the philosophy of expressing one's perceptions before nature, especially asapplied to plein air landscape painting.

In 1845, his family moved from Paris to Le Havre in Normandy. His father wanted him to go into thefamily's ship-chandling and grocery business, but Monet wanted to become an artist. His motherwas a singer, and supported Monet's desire for a career in art.

On 1 April 1851, Monet entered Le Havre secondary school of the arts. Locals knew him well forhis charcoal caricatures, which he would sell for ten to twenty francs. Monet also undertook his firstdrawing lessons from Jacques-François Ochard, a former student of Jacques-Louis David. Onthe beaches of Normandy around 1856 he met fellow artist Eugène Boudin, (1824 – 98) whobecame his mentor and taught him to use oil paints. Boudin taught Monet en plein air (outdoor)techniques for painting. Both were influenced by the Dutch artist Johan Barthold Jongkind.

We can see from this early work that theeighteen year old Monet was adept atrendering the natural landscape, itsatmosphere and its colours, in a conventional‘academic’ style.

When Monet traveled to Paris to visit theLouvre, he witnessed painters copying from theold masters. Having brought his paints andother tools with him, he would instead go andsit by a window and paint what he saw. Monetwas in Paris for several years and met otheryoung painters, including Édouard Manet andothers who would become friends and fellowImpressionists.

Conscripted into the army, after one year whilein Algeria, he contracted typhoid fever andwhile convalescing his aunt secured hisrelease on his promise to attend art school.Disillusioned with the traditional art taught atart schools, in 1862 Monet became a studentof Charles Gleyre in Paris, where he metPierre-Auguste Renoir, Frédéric Bazille andAlfred Sisley. Together they shared newapproaches to art, painting the effects of lighten plein air with broken colour and rapidbrushstrokes, in what later came to be knownas Impressionism.

Mouth of the Seine at Honfleur 1865

When Monet traveled to Paris to visit the Louvre, he saw painters copying from the old masters.Having brought his paints and other tools with him, he would instead go and sit by a window andpaint what he saw. Monet was in Paris for several years and met Édouard Manet (1832 – 83) andother young painters who would become friends and fellow Impressionists.

View at Rouelles, Le Havre 1858

In 1865 Monet had two paintings accepted for the Salon. Thefollowing year he painted Women in the Garden when hewas 26. It is a large work painted en plein air; the size of thecanvas necessitated Monet painting its upper half with thecanvas lowered into a trench he had dug, so that he couldmaintain a single point of view for the entire work. The settingis the garden of a property he was renting. His companionCamille posed for the figures. Monet finished the workindoors, and used magazine illustrations to render thefashionable clothing.

It was rejected for the salon in 1867 on the grounds ofsubject and narrative weakness. The Salon was alsotroubled by Monet's heavy brushstrokes, a style whichwould, of course, become one of the hallmarks ofImpressionism. A judge commented, "Too many youngpeople think of nothing but continuing in this abominabledirection. It is high time to protect them and save art!" Thepainting was purchased by fellow artist Frédéric Bazille tohelp support Monet at a time when he had no money.

This was the first of approximately 140snowscapes produced by Monet.

A journalist observed: ''We have only seenhim once. It was in the winter, during severaldays of snow, when communications werevirtually at a standstill. It was cold enough tosplit stones. We noticed a foot-warmer, thenan easel, then a man, swathed in three coats,his hands in gloves, his face half-frozen. Itwas M. Monet, studying a snow effect.''

Monet focuses on light and colour in a newway by reducing the number of shades. Hechose an earth tone colour scheme andincreased the number of shades of blue tohighlight reflections on the snow.

The hazy distance and the blue shadowscreate a sense of intense, foot stampingcold, intensified by the subtle grey/orange ofthe brickwork, and the dark note of the birdsettling by chance on the fence, giving asudden focus like an unexpected chord in agentle piano sonata.

The Magpie is an early example of Monet'sinvestigation of coloured shadows. In thispiece, Monet makes use of the primarycolours of blue and yellow. The shadowproduced by yellow sunlight shining on thesnow gives the impression of a blue-violetcolour, the effect of simultaneous contrastand representing the actual, changingconditions of light and shadow as seen innature.

Women in the Garden 1866

A Cart on the Snowy Road at Honfleur1865 or 1867

The Magpie 1868–1869

Monet's innovative use of light and colour led to its rejection by the Paris Salon of 1869.The Impressionists examined the effects of light and colour on forms, concluding that local colour—an object's true colour in white light— becomes modified by the quality of the light shining on it,by reflections from other objects, and by the effects produced by juxtaposed colours. Shadows donot appear grey or black, but are composed of colours modified by reflections or other conditions.By the use of varied colours and short choppy brush strokes, Monet was able to catch accuratelythe vibrating quality of light.

La Grenouillère was a popular middle-classresort consisting of a spa, a boatingestablishment and a floating café. Located on theSeine near Bougival it was easily accessible bytrain from Paris. Monet and Renoir, bothdesperately poor, recognised in La Grenouillèrean ideal subject for the images of leisure theyhoped to sell. The two friends were undoubtedlyworking side by side as there is an almostidentical composition of the same subject byRenoir.

Monet concentrates on repetitive elements – the ripples on the water, the foliage, the boats, thehuman figures – to weave a fabric of brushstrokes which, although emphatically brushstrokes,retain a strong descriptive quality.This is one of two oil sketches for a larger, more highly finished painting, now lost.

In this simple scene on the beach Monet shows hismastery of the quick brushstroke and the use of thinlypainted shadows and thick impasto in the highlights toconvey the effect of bright sunshine. The compositionis novel: pushing the figures to the edges of thecanvas and opening up the distant scene, framed atthe bottom by the chair. The picture is drained of highcolour, intensifying the impression of shimmeringlight, being painted mainly in pale grey/blues andsandy ochre; with an intenser note of blue in theumbrella, contrasted by a small snatch of itscomplementary orange in the child's shoe placed onthe ear of the chair.

The left figure may be Camille, on the right possiblythe wife of Eugène Boudin, whose beach scenesinfluenced Monet.

After the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War inJuly 1870, Monet and his family took refuge inEngland where he studied the works ofConstable and Turner, both of whose landscapeswould serve to inspire Monet's innovations in thestudy of colour. In the spring of 1871, Monet'sworks were refused authorisation for inclusion inthe Royal Academy exhibition.

Here Monet has used brush strokes to constructthe painting, horizontal to illustrate the movementand light coming off the water, vertical to depict thethe masts and sails. Occasional notes ofcomplementary colour in the in the boats and

La Grenouillére 1869

La plage de Trouville 1870

Fishing Boats Leaving the Harbour,Le Havre 1974

background bring the the painting alive against the cold blues.

From December 1871 to 1878 Monet lived atArgenteuil, a village on the right bank of the Seineriver near Paris, and a popular Sunday-outingdestination for Parisians, where he painted someof his best-known works. In 1873 he purchased asmall boat equipped to be used as a floatingstudio. From the boat studio Monet paintedlandscapes and also portraits of Édouard Manetand his wife; Manet in turn depicted Monetpainting aboard the boat, accompanied byCamille, in 1874.

The Studio Boat 1874

While he was working in his floating studio, Monet was very short of money and was obliged to askfor help. "Here I am again without a soul," he wrote to Manet, asking for a loan of fifty francs oneday, twenty francs another. "I have got into the hands of a bailiff who can cause me a lot of trouble.He has given me until midday." Manet was generous, as usual. Antonin Proust says that in hisstudio he placed his friend's canvases in a good light," being anxious to find buyers for them andnot troubling about his own. Claude Monet's pictures enjoyed his special favour at theseexhibitions.

Monet exhibited this work at the second group show of theImpressionist painters in 1876, where it attracted much attention.Large-scale figure paintings had traditionally been considered the mostsignificant challenge for an artist. Using this format, Monet created avirtuoso display of brilliant colour that is also a witty comment on thecurrent Paris fad for all things Japanese. Camille is shown wrapped in asplendid kimono and surrounded by fans and wearing a blond wig toemphasize her Western identity.

Camille in Japanese Costume 1876

After working on rural landscapes, ClaudeMonet returned to Paris in 1877 and made adozen oil paintings of the Gare Saint-Lazarerailway station in Paris. This was Monet's firstseries of paintings, concentrating on a singletheme.

La Gare Saint-Lazare 1877

The paintings capture the smoky interior of this Paris railway station, in varied atmosphericconditions and from various points of view. The works were in part a response to the criticism of hispainting Impression, Sunrise, which was exhibited at the First Impressionist Exhibition in April1874, and also as a representation of technical progress.

Eight of the paintings were exhibited at the Third Impressionist Exhibition in April 1877, where theywere admired by Émile Zola, who later wrote his 1890 novel La Bête Humaine about the railways.

Monet chose to focus his attention here on the glass-and-iron train shed, where he found an appealingcombination of artificial and natural effects: the risingsteam of locomotives trapped within the structure,and daylight penetrating the large, glazed sections ofthe roof. Monet’s depictions of the stationinaugurated what was to become for him anestablished pattern of painting a specific motifrepeatedly in order to capture subtle and temporalatmospheric changes. But the series alsorepresented his last attempt to deal with urbanrealities: from this point on in his career, Monet wouldbe largely a painter of landscapes.

Gare Saint-Lazare, arrival of a train 1877

In 1876, Camille Monet became ill with tuberculosis. The birth oftheir second son, Michel, in 1878, weakened her already fadinghealth. In the summer of that year, the family moved to the villageof Vétheuil where they shared a house with the family of ErnestHoschedé, a wealthy department store owner and patron of thearts. In 1878, Camille was diagnosed with uterine cancer. Shedied on 5 September 1879 at the age of thirty-two. Monet madethis study in oils of his dead wife.

Many years later, Monet confessed to his friend GeorgesClemenceau that his need to analyse colours was both the joyand torment of his life. He explained: ''I one day found myselflooking at my beloved wife's dead face and just systematicallynoting the colours according to an automatic reflex!''

Camille Monet on her Deathbed 1879

John Berger describes the work as "a blizzard of white, grey, purplish paint ... a terrible blizzard ofloss which will forever efface her features. In fact there can be very few death-bed paintings whichhave been so intensely felt or subjectively expressive."

After several difficult months following the deathof Camille, Monet began to create some of hisbest paintings of the 19th century. During theearly 1880s, Monet painted several groups oflandscapes and seascapes in what heconsidered to be campaigns to document theFrench countryside.

Monet's friend Ernest Hoschedé becamebankrupt, in 1878 and left for Belgium. After thedeath of Camille, Monet continued to live in thehouse in Vétheuil, Alice Hoschedé helped Monetto raise his two sons, Jean and Michel,alongside her own six children. In April 1883,looking out of the window of the little trainbetween Vernon and Gasny, he discoveredGiverny in Normandy. Monet, Alice Hoschedéand the children moved to Vernon, then to thehouse in Giverny, where he planted a large garden and where he painted for much of the rest ofhis life. Following the death of her estranged husband, Monet married Alice Hoschedé in 1892.

Vétheuil in the Fog 1879

This late painting of Turner shows the citybathed and dissolved in light, much asMonet was to do sixty years later. Monethad studied the paintings of Tuner andConstable when in London. Considered‘unfinished’ and part of the Turner bequestwhich was mostly in storage until the 20thcentury, it would not have been seen byMonet.

Turner, Scene in Venice 1840-5

Haystacks in the Sunlight, Haystacks, End of Summer, 1890-91Morning Effect 1890

Haystacks 1890-91 Haystack, Sunset 1890-91

Haystacks 1890-91 In the Haystacks series Monet repeated the same subject to show the differing light andatmosphere at different times of day, across the seasons and in many types of weather.

To begin with his stepdaughter, Blanche Hoschedé, would bring him two canvases, one for sunnyand one for overcast conditions. But he soon found he could not catch the ever-changing light andmood on merely two canvases: as a result, Blanche was quickly bringing as many canvases as herwheelbarrow could hold. Monet's daily routine therefore came to involve carting paints, easels andmany unfinished canvases back and forth, working on whichever canvas most closely resembledthe scene of the moment as the conditions and light fluctuated. Although he began painting thestacks en plein air, Monet later revised his initial impressions in his studio, both to generatecontrast and to preserve the harmony within the series.

Poplars at the Poplars in the Sun Poplars (Wind effect) Poplars (Autumn)River Epte

The Poplars series paintings were made by Claude Monet in the summer and Autumn of 1891. Thetrees were in a marsh along the banks of the Epte River a few kilometers upstream from Monet'shome and studio. To reach his floating painting studio that was moored in a place he went by smallboat up the nearby waterway to where it joined the mainstream. The trees were along the riversidein single file, following along an S-curve. There were three groups of paintings — in one group thepaintings have towering Poplars that go off the top edge of the canvas, in another group, there areseven trees and in another group three or four Poplars on the banks of the Epte River nearGiverny. The trees, which actually belonged to the commune of Limetz, were put up for auctionbefore Monet had completed all of his paintings. At a certain point, Monet was forced into buyingthe trees because he still wasn't finished with his paintings. After he finished the series he sold thetrees back to the lumber merchant who wanted them

The Rouen Cathedral paintings, more than thirty in all, were made in 1892 and 1893 in Rouen, andreworked in Monet’s studio in 1894. Monet rented spaces in Rouen across the street from thecathedral as his temporary studio.

When Monet painted the Rouen Cathedral series, he had long since been impressed with the waylight imparts to a subject a distinctly different character at different times of the day and the yearand as atmospheric conditions change. For Monet, the effects of light on a subject became asimportant as the subject itself. These works are an attempt to illustrate the importance of light inour perception of a subject at a given time and place.

Rouen Cathedral,Facade (sunset),Harmony in Gold

and Blue

Rouen Cathedral,Full Sunlight

Rouen Cathedral,West Facade,

Sunlight

The Portal and theSaint-Romain Tower

in Morning Sun,Harmony in Blue

Monet wrote: '‘Things don’t advance very steadily, primarily because each day I discoversomething I hadn’t seen the day before… In the end, I am trying to do the impossible.''Monet found that the thing he had set out to paint—light—was an almost impossible thing tocapture because of its ever-changing nature and its extreme subtlety. He was assisted, however,by his ability to capture the essence of a scene quickly, then finish it later using a sketch combinedwith his memory of the scene. For these paintings, he used thick layers of richly textured paint,expressive of the intricate nature of the subject.

Four of thirty seven paintings of Charing Cross Bridge

Monet made several trips to London between 1899 and 1905, when he painted three series:Waterloo Bridge, Charing Cross Bridge and the Houses of Parliament. Painted always from thesame spot, from the fifth-floor balcony of the Savoy Hotel. or a terrace at St Thomas' Hospitaloverlooking the Thames, and the same size of 81 cm × 92 cm.

Houses of Parliament,Sunset

Houses of Parliament,Sun Breaking

Through the Fog

Houses of Parliament,Stormy day

Captivated as he was by the London fog, a notable atmospheric effect made markedly worse bythe heavy pollution of the Industrial Revolution, they are explorations of light and colour asobserved in differing weather and times of day.

He was extremely prolific, beginning nearly 100 paintings in London. Thirty-seven of the canvaseswere of Charing Cross Bridge, only twelve of which he finished in London; the rest he took back tohis Giverny studio for completion with the aid of photographs which he sent to London for. Thiscaused some adverse reaction, but Monet replied that his means of creating a work was his ownbusiness and it was up to the viewer to judge the final result.

In the footsteps of Turner Monet visited Venice anumber of times, painting a major series there inwhich the forms of the buildings, the poles, the seaand sky appear as if melted in colour.

From 1883, Monet lived in Giverny with his largefamily, which consisted of his two children and AliceHoschedé who he married in 1892, following thedeath of her estranged husband, and her sixchildren. He rented the house and 2 acres of landfrom a local landowner. Grand Canal, Venice 1908 The family worked and built up the gardens, and Monet's fortunes began to change for the betteras he had increasing success in selling his paintings. By November 1890, he was prosperousenough to buy the house, the surrounding buildings and the land for his gardens. During the1890s, Monet built a greenhouse and a second studio, a spacious building well lit with skylights.

In 1899, he began painting the water lilies, first in verticalviews with a Japanese bridge as a central feature and laterin the series of large-scale paintings that was to occupy himcontinuously for the next 20 years of his life.

There are approximately 250 oil paintings in Monet’s WaterLilies series. The paintings depict his flower garden at hishome in Giverny, and were the main focus of his artisticproduction during the last thirty years of his life. Many of theworks were painted while Monet suffered from cataracts.

Water Lilies and the Japanese Bridge 1897–1899

Monet wrote daily instructions to his gardener, precisedesigns and layouts for plantings, and invoices for his floralpurchases and his collection of botany books. As his wealthgrew, his garden evolved. He remained its architect, evenafter he hired seven gardeners.

Monet purchased additional land with a water meadow. In1893 he began a vast landscaping project which includedlily ponds that would become the subjects of his best-known works. White water lilies local to France wereplanted along with imported cultivars from South Americaand Egypt, resulting in a range of colours including yellow,blue and white lilies that turned pink with age.

Water Lilies 1906

This scenery, with its alternating light and mirror-likereflections, became an integral part of his work. By themid-1910s Monet had achieved a completely new, fluid,and somewhat audacious style of painting in which thewater-lily pond became the point of departure for analmost abstract art.

From 1914 Monet began to develop the first signs ofcataracts.

During World War I, in which his younger sonMichel served and his friend and admirer GeorgesClemenceau led the French nation, Monet painted aseries of weeping willow trees as homage to theFrench fallen soldiers. Weeping Willow 1918-19

Reflections of Clouds on the Water Lily Pond 1914-26

The Rose Arches1913

Water Lilies 1907

Water Lilies c.1915

During the 1920s, the state of France built a pairof oval rooms at the Musée de l'Orangerie as apermanent home for eight water lily murals byMonet. The exhibit opened to the public on 16May 1927, a few months after Monet's death.

Waterlilies 1920 The Japanese Footbridge 1920–1922

In 1923, he underwent two operations to remove his cataracts. The paintings done while thecataracts affected his vision have a general reddish tone, which is characteristic of the vision ofcataract victims. It may also be that after surgery he was able to see certain ultraviolet wavelengthsof light that are normally excluded by the lens of the eye; this may have had an effect on thecolours he perceived. After his operations he repainted some of these paintings, with bluer waterlilies than before.

Monet and the Impressionists changed the way we look at the world, and the way it is representedin art. In that they were revolutionary, and paved the way for Post Impressionism and theinnovations of the twentieth century. He lived to see the establishment of the reputations of thenext generation of artists: van Gough, Gauguin and Cézanne, and the birth of Modernism: theradical use of colour by Matisse and the Fauves, the abstractions of Cubism and the subjectiveand emotional extremes of Expressionism. In his late work we may see parallels with theseunconventional art styles, however he remained true to his own vision of painting from nature,transforming it through colour and his extraordinary skill with the brush to create emblems of light.Cézanne said of him; ''Monet is only an eye, but what an eye.''

Monet died of lung cancer on 5 December 1926 at the age of 86 and is buried in the Givernychurch cemetery. Monet had insisted that the occasion be simple; thus only about fifty peopleattended the ceremony. At his funeral, his long-time friend Georges Clemenceau removed theblack cloth draped over the coffin, stating, "No black for Monet!" and replaced it with a flower-patterned cloth.