Claude Monet was born on November 14th, 1840 in Paris, France. Monet, along with several of his friends, was one of the founders of the impressionism movement. At a young age, Monet developed an interest for the outdoors and it is evident that this interest greatly influenced what type of paintings he would create throughout his artistic career. Monet focused on painting the leisure activities of Parisian lifestyles, the landscapes of the Normandy Coast, and his home located in Giverny, France.
The work I selected is called Water Lilies, 1919. The flowers are a deep red with hints of scarlet orange and pinkish magenta. The lily pads are a brighter green in comparison to the leaves/grass surrounding the water and it’s almost as if they’re light yellow or gold. The lily pads are this bright because of how the light from the sky/sunset reflects off of them. It’s also easy to see where most of the light in this scene is focused on because of the different gradients on the lily pads. The water isn’t just a solid blue color; there are hints of purple, lavender and even white.
This work reflects the aesthetic preferences associated with modernism because of Monet’s painting style and how it was considered a rejection of the traditional art teachings of his time. Instead of following the traditional approaches to landscape painting, that included clear and distinctive lines and colors, Monet painted with rapid brushstrokes and fusions of color that blend into one another. This blending of color and short brushstrokes gives the illusion of a softer look with the lily pads, the flowers, and even the water looking as if they were fuzzy like.
I encountered this work at the MET with the intention of picking a piece that was done by Monet because he is one of my favorite artists. I’ve seen several of Monet’s paintings at the MOMA beforehand and because I went to the MET for this assignment, I wanted to see if there were any pieces that I haven’t seen yet. Even though Monet has painted lots of paintings in his life time of various landscapes and people, I always find myself revisiting any one of his water lily paintings. He has a huge collection dedicated to painting water lilies and I find them interesting because even though he has painted the same flowers over and over again, he manages to invoke different feelings when looking at each piece. Some of them are presented as being more serene, some gloomy, and some bright and full of life.
sources: https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/cmon/hd_cmon.htm
For me, Monet’s water lilies are what I immediately think of when we talk about Impressionism. These paintings are a brilliant illustration of how the impressionists successfully and faithfully reproduce a landscape or an image without using the techniques of Realism.