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Impressionism

CLAUDE MONET

https://www.tate.org.uk/kids/explore/what-is/impressionism

Impressionism was a radical art movement that began in the late 1800s, centered primarily around Parisian painters. Impressionists rebelled against classical subject matter and embraced modernity, desiring to create works that reflected the world in which they lived. Uniting them was a focus on how light could define a moment in time, with color providing definition instead of black lines. The Impressionists emphasized the practice of plein air painting, or painting outside. Initially derided by critics, Impressionism has since been embraced as one of the most popular and influential art styles in Western history.

Beginnings of Impressionism

Impressionism coalesced in the 1860s when a group of painters including Claude Monet, Alfred Sisley and Pierre-Auguste Renoir pursued plein air painting together.

American John Rand never joined their ranks as a preeminent artist, but as a painter living in London, he designed in 1841 a device that would revolutionize the art world: paint in a tube. His clever new technology offered easily portable, pre-mixed paint, and allowed painters to bring their process outdoors.

Rand’s technological leap allowed spontaneity and a casual quality to the work of Impressionists. Over time, other artists joined in the practice, and their exploration together moved from indoor studios to outdoor cafes, with regular get-togethers to discuss their ideas.

Monet

Monet was a leader of the movement, and his brief brush strokes and fragmented color application found their way into the works of others.

He was particularly interested in the passage of time in his portrayal of light. His series of paintings capturing Rouen Cathedral at different times of the year and day offer clear examples of Monet’s ideas on how a subject can be transformed by properties around it. His most famous of this series is 1894’s Rouen Cathedral: The Facade at Sunset.

Monet expanded his Impressionist practice throughout his life, culminating in his multiple studies of the Waterlily Pond, produced from 1898 to 1926, of which the later works in the series (done just before his death) achieve an almost abstract quality.

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LESSON OBJECTIVES

recognize the key features of Impressionism

differ impressionism to other art styles

define impressionism art

recognize Monet’s painting techniques

contemplate the reasoning for this painting’s restoration

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HISTORY

Impressionism emerged in nineteenth-century France and is characterized by painting outdoors and creating artwork spontaneously on the spot, rather than in a studio from pre-drawn sketches. The main focus of impressionist artists was on landscapes and everyday life scenes.

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DEVELOPING IMPRESSIONISM

Impressionism was created by Claude Monet and fellow artists in Paris starting in the early 1860s.

Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement characterized by visible brush strokes, open composition, emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities (often accentuating the effects of the passage of time), ordinary subject matter, unusual visual angles, and inclusion of movement as a crucial element of human perception and experience.

The Impressionists faced harsh opposition from the conventional art community in France. The name of the style derives from the title of a Claude Monet work, Impression, soleil levant (Impression, Sunrise), which provoked the critic Louis Leroy to coin the term in a satirical 1874 review of the First Impressionist Exhibition published in the Parisian newspaper Le Charivari.[1]

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OBSERVE IMPRESSIONISM

What is the first element of the painting that catches your eye?

Can you make a guess as to the time of day depicted in the scene?

Haystacks is the common English title for a series of impressionist paintings by Claude Monet. The principal subject of each painting in the series is stacks of harvested wheat (or possibly barley or oats: the original French title, Les Meules à Giverny, simply means The Stacks at Giverny). The title refers primarily to a twenty-five canvas series (Wildenstein Index Numbers 1266–1290) which Monet began near the end of the summer of 1890 and continued through the following spring, though Monet also produced five earlier paintings using this same stack subject. A precursor to the series is the 1884 Haystack Near Giverny (Pushkin Museum).

The series is famous for the way in which Monet repeated the same subject to show the differing light and atmosphere at different times of day, across the seasons and in many types of weather.

The series is among Monet's most notable works. The largest Haystacks collections are held at the Musée d'Orsay and Musée Marmottan Monet in Paris, and in the Art Institute of Chicago.[1] Other collections include the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston,[2][3] the Metropolitan Museum and Museum of Modern Art in New York, the National Museum of Western Art in Tokyo,[4] and the Musée de l'Orangerie in Paris. The Art Institute of Chicago collection includes six of the twenty-five Haystacks.[5]

Other museums that hold parts of this series include the Getty Center in Los Angeles,[6] the Hill-Stead Museum in Farmington, Connecticut (which also has one of five from the earlier 1888–89 harvest),[7] the Scottish National Gallery,[8] the Minneapolis Institute of Arts,[9] Kunsthaus Zürich, Tel Aviv Museum of Art and the Shelburne Museum, Vermont.[10] Private collections hold the remaining Haystacks paintings.

Monet background

Main article: Claude Monet

Monet settled in Giverny in 1883. Most of his paintings from 1883 until his death 40 years later were of scenes within 3 kilometres (2 mi) of his home and gardens. Monet was intensely aware of and fascinated by the visual nuances of the region's landscape and by the endless variations in the days and in the seasons—the stacks were just outside his door.[11]

Monet had previously painted a single subject in different light and different moods. However, as he matured as a painter, his depictions of atmospheric influences were increasingly concerned not only with specific effects but with the overall color harmonies that allowed him an autonomous use of rich color.[12] The conventional wisdom was that the stacks were a simple subject but also an unimaginative one. However, contemporary writers and friends of the artist noted that Monet's subject matter was always carefully chosen, the product of careful thought and analysis.[13] Monet undertook to capture the stacks in direct light and then to re-examine them from the same view-point in different, often more muted, light and atmospheric conditions. It was then not unusual for Monet, in search of harmonious transitions within the series, to alter the canvases back in his studio.[14]

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Initially mocked for its seemingly incomplete appearance, the unconventional Impressionist style has now risen to prominence as one of the most celebrated and well-known art movements in history. Emphasizing light and color, quick brushwork, and ordinary daily scenes, Impressionism has captured the attention and admiration of art enthusiasts worldwide.

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The impressionists decided to paint outdoors, rather than in a studio, so they could better capture the changes in light caused by sunlight. This practice allowed them to depict the natural scene with more vibrancy, emphasizing the shifts in light and color. They used quick, fragmented brushstrokes to convey the transitory nature of light.

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CLAUDE MONET

Claude Monet: Self-portrait in a Beret Self-portrait in a Beret, oil on canvas by Claude Monet, 1886; in a private collection.

Claude Monet was a famous French painter whose work gave a name to the art movement Impressionism, which was concerned with capturing light and natural forms.

(1840–1926). The leader of the 19th-century impressionist art movement, Claude Monet continued throughout his long career to pursue its goals. Monet preferred to paint outdoors, directly from nature. Almost all his work shows his desire to capture on canvas the changing effects of light.

Monet was born in Paris on November 14, 1840, and spent his youth in Le Havre, where his father worked as a grocer. In 1859 Monet went to Paris to begin the serious study of art. He spent most of his time, however, in a café frequented by artists and intellectuals. In 1862, after an interval of military service, he returned to Paris and entered the studio of Charles Gleyre. There he met Pierre Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley, and Jean-Frédéric Bazille. Soon, however, the four left Gleyre, and Monet led them on an expedition to the Fontainebleau Forest, where he introduced them to open-air painting.

After gaining acceptance into the Salons of 1865 and 1866, Monet suffered a series of reversals. He was deep in debt, and his huge painting Women in the Garden was rejected at the 1867 Salon. That same year his mistress, Camille Doncieux, gave birth to their first child, a son, Jean. Without a permanent home or an income, Monet lodged with friends and borrowed what money he could. At times he was even too poor to buy paint or canvas. In 1870 Claude and Camille were married. Their financial situation became worse during the next few years. Camille’s health declined following the birth of their second son, Michel, and in 1879 she died.

In the spring of 1874 Monet and some of his friends decided to have a showing of their works. Among the exhibitors were Paul Cézanne, Edgar Degas, Renoir, Sisley, and Camille Pissarro. The group became known as “impressionists,” a term applied derisively by a critic who said that Monet’s sketchy landscape ‘Impression: Sunrise’ reminded him of wallpaper. Although the exhibit attracted attention, none of the paintings was sold.

It was not until after 1886 that Monet began to enjoy his first financial success, a result of a growing market for his works in the United States. In the 1890s Monet painted several series of works—Haystacks (stacks of wheat), Poplars, and Rouen Cathedral—in which he rendered a single scene again and again, in all its variations of light, shadow, and season.

In 1892 Monet married Alice Hoschedé, the widow of a former friend and benefactor. They settled at Giverny, where Monet created the beautiful water garden that figures so prominently in his later paintings. Between 1899 and 1904 Monet traveled to London, where he painted his Thames series. In 1908 and 1909 he went to Venice, where he recorded the canals and palaces of that city in a series of paintings that he continued working on at Giverny until 1912. Aside from these trips, Monet was content to remain at Giverny, where he continued painting until his death on December 5, 1926, at the age of 86. His home and gardens at Giverny are now a national monument.

Impressionism, as developed by Monet, sought to capture the fleeting, momentary aspects of nature, especially to convey the atmospheric effects of light. As he pursued this goal, his technique became increasingly free, causing critics to remark that the paintings looked unfinished. Instead of mixing colors on his palette, Monet applied separate strokes of pure, unmixed color directly to the canvas. The method produced a shimmering, vibrating effect that simulated the effects of natural light. In his last paintings, the Water Lilies (1900–26), nature as a subject began to be less significant than color.

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Early Works:

Claude Monet: Camille Monet on a Garden Bench

Camille Monet on a Garden Bench, oil on canvas by Claude Monet, 1873; in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City. 60.6 × 80.3 cm.(less)

Claude Monet: San Giorgio Maggiore at Dusk, 1908

Also occasionally referred to as Sunset in Venice, was painted in the autumn of 1908 in Venice where Monet and his wife Alice had traveled.

The period in which Monet created this riverscape or seascape painting was when he began losing his eyesight from gray cataracts. Much like other impressionists who were afflicted with pain or disease, suffering seemed to provoke them to do their greatest works: Monet painted this masterpiece.

As the 1870s began, Monet continued his pursuit of natural phenomena. In order to avoid the Franco-German War, he left his son and Camille, whom he married in 1870, and traveled to London. There, with Pissarro, he was introduced by Daubigny to Paul Durand-Ruel, who later became his dealer. In 1871 and 1872 Monet painted canals, boats, and windmills in the Netherlands and worked again at Le Havre. On his return, Monet rented a house at Argenteuil, on the Seine near Paris. The years he lived there mark the height of the Impressionist movement. He helped organize an independent exhibition, apart from the official Salon, of the Impressionists’ work in 1874. One of Monet’s works at the exhibition, Impression, Sunrise (1872), inspired the journalist Louis Leroy to give the group their name.

Claude Monet wasn't your average artist. He was a rebel, a visionary who refused to play by the rules of the art world. Monet had a deep love for nature and a burning desire to capture its fleeting beauty. This passion became the foundation of his life's work. But the road to becoming the father of Impressionism was far from easy.

Let’s explore the story of a man who dared to paint not just with his eyes, but with his heart, and in doing so, forever changed the way we interact with art.

Born on November 14, 1840, in Paris, Claude Monet entered a world that was rapidly changing. He pursued his artistic dreams despite initial resistance from his family.

What many don't know is that Monet's early work focused on caricatures. His transition from drawing silly faces to capturing breathtaking landscapes was more than just trying something new. It was a way for Monet to express his deep appreciation for the natural world around him.

Monet's early career was marked by financial hardships. He often relied on the support of friends and patrons to keep creating. This theme of resilience in the face of adversity would come to define his life and work.

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For me, a landscape does not exist in its own right, since its appearance changes at every moment; but the surrounding atmosphere brings it to life—the light and the air which vary continually. For me, it is only the surrounding atmosphere which gives subjects their true value.

Plein Air

With the introduction of paint tubes in 1841, the popularity of painting outdoors, called en plein air (French for “in the open air”), increased. It quickly became a fundamental feature of Impressionism. Claude Monet was a lifelong advocate of plein-air painting. He spent hours at a time observing nature—the way colors reflected on water at different times of day and the way the clouds changed. In Waterlilies, Monet sought to capture the constantly shifting relationships between light, water, reflection, and atmosphere. The resulting effect positions the viewer simultaneously over and in the space: there is no indication of the horizon or pond bank to ground the view. The ideal was to capture a moment, not the details.

The photo above shows Monet in his gardens at Giverny sitting next to the waterlily pond while working on PAM’s Waterlilies. A large white parasol keeps the sun glare off the canvas. Next to him is Blanche Hoschedé, his daughter-in-law and stepdaughter.

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Monet’s Painting Techniques

BRUSHSTROKES:

Monet used a number of different brushstrokes and techniques to create Waterlilies. By this point, his brushwork had become markedly freer and more liquid. He used long vertical strokes to describe the reflected willow branches and swirling, circular strokes for the sky and lily pads. Juxtapositions of blues and yellows (complementary colors) heighten each color’s intensity.

BLOCKING IN:

MONET DID NOT USE UNDERDRAWING, WHICH ARE SKETCHED LINES MADE BY A PAINTER AS A PRELIMINARY GUIDE; RATHER, HE BLOCKED IN THE MAIN FIELDS OF COLOR WITH THINNER WASHES OF TRANSPARENT, DILUTE PAINTS, AS IN THE LAVENDER COLOR AT RIGHT. MONET’S HANDLING OF THE PAINT WAS LOOSE AND RAPID.

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Wet-in-wet:

Detail of an impressionist painting, demonstrating "wet into wet"

Monet created the reflections of weeping willow branches by mixing vivid colors directly on the canvas. He applied successive brushstrokes while the paint was still wet, allowing the strokes to mix in a fluid way that produces no hard edges.

LAYERING:

Monet did not paint the water first. The brilliant blue of the sky reflected on the water’s surface was created with sweeping, opaque brushstrokes, but here we see the blue stroke was pulled over the green of the reflected willow branches. This indicates that the blue was applied later.

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Impasto:

In the later stages of painting, Monet applied the paint thickly in fluid, sweeping brushstrokes to create the waterlily flowers. Delicate paint peaks are visible in the areas of green and white where the loaded brush was lifted from the surface. The flowers were originally painted in violet tones; later, he applied cool blue and green on top of the violet in the upper half of the painting.

Dry Brush:

Fragmented blue and violet brushstrokes make up this round shape. Thick paint was dragged over dried lower layers, resulting in a broken-up brushstroke that skips over the surface of the underlying paint.

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Tache:

Although Monet had largely abandoned his use of short, loaded strokes of color, called taches (French for “blots”), by this time in his career, we see echoes of this technique in the pink water lilies in the lower half of the painting. He used a flat brush to apply quick dabs of thick, pure color. These blossoms have minimum detail; he focused instead on intense colors and general shapes to capture their essence.

Signature:

Waterlilies has a signature stamp. This is because Monet kept this work in his private collection. He would typically sign only works that were going to his dealer for exhibition or sale. After he died, his estate created a stamp used as a means to indicate authenticity.

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Claude Monet (French, 1840-1926), Waterlilies (detail), 1914-1915, oil on canvas, 63 1/4 in x 71 1/8 in, Museum Purchase: Helen Thurston Ayer Fund. Portland Art Museum, Portland, Oregon, 59.16.d a little bit of body text

Waterlilies

Waterlilies was painted between 1914 and 1915. Monet was seventy-six years old and had only recently returned to painting after a long hiatus following the death of his beloved wife, Alice. Although in this artwork he returns to a theme he had painted before—his waterlily pond—it is with a new focus and approach. Monet revisits an idea he had been mulling over for some time, of creating a Grandes Décorations—paintings on a grand scale that would envelop the viewer—as his gift to France. In Waterlilies we see Monet beginning to work out these ideas. The canvas is larger, no longer easel-size, the brushwork is freer, and his approach is increasingly abstract. There is no longer any reference to the shore or the horizon; instead, the focus of the painting is the ever-changing light, shadows, and reflections. Monet speaks often of seeking to capture that which exists between himself and his subjects:

The monumental canvas Waterlilies by Claude Monet is perhaps the most treasured painting in the Portland Art Museum’s collection. Now, after over 65 years, it will finally look much as the artist intended—without varnish. The detailed process of conservation resulted in new color harmonies and brightness. To celebrate the restoration of the painting and the campus transformation project, this beloved icon will be presented in its historical context. Monet and his fellow Impressionists were obsessed with Japanese “floating world” prints that had only been available in Europe and the United States for a few decades, yet transformed the way artists looked at the world. They introduced new concepts of beauty and new ways of seeing the world that decentered the European tradition.

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Beginning in the 1870s, Claude Monet made it clear that his paintings were not to be varnished, as did many other Impressionists regarding their works. He speaks often of seeking to capture that which exists between himself and his subjects: the air, the “ether,” the atmosphere. A critical aspect of portraying this intangible quality is a very intentional emphasis on the painting’s surface. Monet sought a textured, matte, and chalky surface with subtle variations of luminosity and tone.

The varnish applied to Waterlilies substantially alters these essential soft, delicate tonalities. It saturates the paint films, distorting the colors and altering their intended relationship to one another.

Waterlilies is undergoing conservation treatment to remove an acrylic resin varnish applied in 1959. The aim is to return the painting more closely to the intended appearance.

Detail showing the gloss of the painting’s surface.

Detail of a blue passage with the varnish removed on the left half. In the devarnished half the blues have a more pastel-like quality and subtle tonal nuances are once again visible. Monet’s intended emphasis on the surface of the painting – the texture and buildup of the brushstrokes are more visible; returning an emphasis to the surface of the painting.

Conservation Strategy

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Waterlilies Series

Video:

Claude Monet's "Water Lilies" series, particularly the murals at the Musée de l'Orangerie, are significant for their depiction of nature, especially Monet's beloved water garden in Giverny, and for their symbolic representation of peace and hope in a time of war.

Here's a more detailed look at the significance:

1. Nature and Artistic Vision:

Subject Matter:

The paintings focus on the artist's water garden in Giverny, France, where he created a pond with water lilies and other plants.

Monet's Perspective:

Monet saw the water lilies as a bridge between the garden, water, and sky, creating a harmonious and immersive natural scene.

Reflections and Light:

Monet was fascinated by the play of light and reflections on the water's surface, which he captured in his paintings.

Impressionism:

The series exemplifies Impressionist techniques, with a focus on capturing fleeting moments and the changing effects of light and weather.

2. Symbolism and Meaning:

Peace and Hope:

The paintings were created during and after World War I, and some interpret them as a response to the horrors of war, offering a sense of peace and tranquility.

War Memorial:

Some view the "Water Lilies" as a war memorial, representing the endlessness of time and the search for beauty in the face of suffering.

Meditation on Nature:

The paintings can be seen as a meditation on the relationship between humans and nature, and the search for harmony and balance.

Japanese Influence:

Monet, like many Impressionists, was heavily inspired by the techniques and images of Japanese art. He wanted his garden at Giverny to be as natural and plainly beautiful as possible in order to honor the Japanese ideals of nature above all in art.

3. Artistic Legacy:

Iconic Status:

Monet's "Water Lilies" are among the most recognized and celebrated works of the 20th century, influencing many artists and art movements.

Influence on Later Artists:

The series' focus on color, light, and the natural world has influenced later artists, including those in the Post-impressionist, Expressionist, and Abstract-expressionist movements.

Environmental Awareness:

Monet's paintings have contributed to a broader understanding of the importance of nature and the environment.

Monet's Retreat:

The "Water Lilies" represent Monet's full retreat into nature and his favorite subject, reflecting his deep connection to his garden and the natural world.