Claude Monet- Impression, Sunrise. Essay

Impressionism is an artistic style of painting that originated in France in the 1870s. This style of painting attempts to capture an experience or emotion opposed depicting a scene accurately. Every impressionistic painter has a distinct method of rendering as well as their own distinct set of qualities that reflect the artist themselves. For instance, The Basket Chair by Berthe Morisot and The Orange Trees by Gustave Caillebotte are two impressionist works of art of oils on canvas that contrast in many ways. These two paintings will be compared side by side with an in depth approach comparing the artist’s personal status in society, modernism’s role in the piece, and the execution of composition.

Ferdinand Loyen du Puigaudeau was a French Impressionist, so his paintings were created in the Impressionism movement. Impressionism is where the artists would want to capture a moment of any time a day and to focus on weather conditions. The most popular paintings from the Impressionism movement are landscapes. The artists would paint by doing light brushing strokes and use bright colors. The impressionists were the first group to embrace painting outside.

A lucent crescent of the moon is seen on the top right hand corner of the painting where dramatic contours and fluidity of the brushworks are seen due to the Japonisme influences. Moreover, the eleven stars and the rolling hills are depicted moving to the momentum of the swirling sky.

Claude Monet is one of the most familiar and best loved of all Western artists. His images of poppy fields, poplar trees, water lilies and elegant ladies in blossoming gardens are familiar to people who have never seen the original paintings and may never have visited an art gallery. Monet's works have won a place in the affection of the general public that seems almost without parallel. (Rachman, 4) In the decades since his death in 1926, Monet's work has been intensely studied by a variety of art critics. However, none of his works have been as deeply studied as those done in Giverny, in the early twentieth century. During this time Monet's paintings, which focused on specific subject matter from various viewpoints,

Monet's painting Sunrise displays vivid color, which is commonly used among impressionists. The painting is of the sun rising over the lake, over looking the bay and the boats within. "Sunrise is a patently a seascape; but the painting says more about how one sees than about what one sees. It transcribes the fleeting effects of light and the changing atmosphere of water and air into a tissue of small dots and streaks of color-the elements of pure perception" (Fiero 114). This painting is typical of its style because it captures light at that moment. The sun is rising and its color is projected to everything in its path. Monet seems to capture this

heavy stroke which pushes some of the paint and gathers it to create a textured stroke.

Claude Monet's Grainstack (Sunset) is the painting I chose from the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. Monet was an impressionist painter in France, and did most of his work at his home at Giverny. Impressionism got its name from a painting that Monet painted, Impression Sunrise. Impressionist paintings are put into a category based on characteristics such as light that draws attention to objects, rough textures, and visual pleasure that the viewer receives upon looking at the paintings. Impressionist paintings are art for arts sake and focus on leisure and nature. These paintings are generally the most well known and popular paintings because of their attractive appearance.

At close inspection, the colors red, white, yellow and blue placed side by side looked unintelligible as they are placed throughout the trees on the left side of the painting. At a distance, however, the colors begin to mix into different variations of orange, green, yellow, white, blue, and red, making the palette more interesting. This technique is used on the entire painting. The water’s reflection of the trees uses the same technique. Like in Claude Monet’s first major Impressionism painting, Impression: Sunrise (Garnier, 823), the painting Autumn on the Seine, Argenteuil also uses the brushy strokes. Both use a body of water’s reflection in the piece, making the water itself more interesting, and giving Autumn on the Seine, Argenteuil perspective.

A becoming size of 8.25 in. X 9.5 inches, this oil on panel landscape was painted by the American Impressionist painter John Twatchman. The eye is drawn to the bend in the road with a deep gully below the straight pathway. The mood is serene and carefree, whimsical, thought-provoking, light, and fresh. It is painted with the impressionist technique of broken brushwork and blending of colors directly on canvas, also known as the juxtaposition of complimentary colors to increase the intensity of each hue (Gardener and Kleiner 689). These “impressions” artists created in their work were reactions between unverifiable depictions of the outside world and their individual responses to nature. In View from the Holley House, Twatchman captures a fleeting moment in the atmosphere and climate around him ("John Henry Twachtman”). Each impressionist understood the the importance of scrutinizing how

Pablo Picasso was considered the greatest artist of the 20th century because of his unique styles and techniques. Pablo Ruiz y Picasso was born in Malaga, Spain on October 25, 1881 to a professor of art named Jose Ruiz Blanco and his wife Maria Picasso Lopez. Because of his fathers’ occupation, Picasso’s talent was quickly noticed and appreciated. Don Jose, an art teacher, moved Picasso and his family to La Coruna and then to Barcelona where he was Picasso’s instructor at the fine arts academy. At the age of 10 Picasso made his first paintings, and performed brilliantly on the entrance exams to Barcelona’s School Of Fine Arts. From there he went to the academy of San Fernando Madrid, and returned to Barcelona in 1900. In

Art has been part of our society since humanity existed. For countless years’ people been creating, observing, criticizing and appreciating art. Claude Monet’s piece titled Sunrise (Marine) illustrates the daylight in the industrial port of Le Havre of the north coast, France. This piece was made in March or April of 1873. The piece’s present location is the J. Paul Getty Museum, west pavilion, gallery w204. The medium is oil on canvas and is next to another piece made by Monet called The Portal of Rouen Cathedral in the morning light. Claude Monet was part of the impressionist movement that changes French paintings of the nineteenth century. For Sunrise (1872), people criticized the paint due to the appearance of an unfinished painting,

The Sea at Le Havre, painted by Claude Monet in 1868, is a 23 5/8” x 24 3/8” oil on canvas landscape painting. Monet was a French artist who lived from 1840 to 1926 and was considered to be an impressionist. A unique quality of Monet was unblended “sloppy” brushstrokes combined with a use of precise choice of color, as seen clearly in The Sea at Le Havre. Because of his vigorous and richly textured painting style, Monet was able to capture the look and feel of the movement of water, which was demonstrated in The Sea at Le Havre, using an impasto style. He used erratic brushstrokes to show the ripples of forming waves and the foam of the waves crashing on the shore. His brushstrokes are also almost completely horizontal, which seemed to make the painting feel heavier. In the sky, Monet used thicker, longer, and more opaque strokes, as well as of varying hues of blue and gray, along with white, to create a look of overcast. To give the clouds fluffiness and substance, the paint that was used for the sky was inconspicuously smudged in some places, with more defined clouds layered overtop. The depth of the painting is attributed to his choices of color. Black is rarely used in the painting aside from where necessary, but rather replaced with darker shades of blue to show divots in the water, heavy clouds, and the distance of the village of houses that line the horizon. The different shades also give a more realistic form of light to his paintings, which was a focus of the impressionism era. His painting appears to be slightly gloomy, but doesn’t convey sadness. The piece is uniform in color, to emphasize the overcast, darkened day. Monet also used symmetrical spacing, with the canvas split nearly in half between the sea and the sky. The only thing that separates the sea and the sky is a piece of jutted-out land that shows he is on a gulf or an inlet. On that piece of land, that goes a little over a third of the way onto the canvas, Monet used heavy contrast, then continues the horizon with a slightly thick, darker blue-gray line to clearly separate the halves of sea and sky. There are three places where it appears that Monet used black along with darker shades of purple and blue, and each of those three places are

Behind every piece of artwork is a story. The era of impressionism stands out because of its technique and use of vibrant color. I enjoy the soft look and feel the paintings usually have which is why I have decided to discuss this artistic movement in my paper. Furthermore I will touch upon the birth of impressionism and its contributors.

Although Sargent was creating and studying art during the 19th century art movement of Impressionism, his art did not reflect this exposure, apart from some of his early works, and it is not generally considered Impressionist; nevertheless, certain of his artistic elements do show that there was some effect on his style from the artists of his time. One such characteristic of the Impressionist movement is Sargent’s compositional arrangements that are somewhat candid. Additionally, a prominent feature of Sargent’s art is his fascination with and masterful handling of light. Light was one of the principles that was of greatest importance in Impressionist art, and their art was “in reaction to the reflex of light, either real or imaginary.” This definition of one of the aesthetic principles of Impressionism truly encapsulates the work of Sargent, for, even in his earliest art, his attention to light, its source – real or fairly

One of Vincent Van Gogh’s most world renowned paintings is his landscape oil painting Starry Night. The painting displays a small town underneath an unusual yet still extremely beautiful night sky. In this night sky, Van Gogh utilizes an array of colors that blend well together in order to enhance the sky as a whole. The town is clearly a small one due to the amount of buildings that are present in the painting itself. In this small town most of the buildings have lights on which symbolize life in a community. Another visual in Starry Night is the mountain like figures that appear in the background of the illustrious painting. Several things contribute to the beauty of Van Gogh’s painting which are the painting’s function, context, style, and design. Van Gogh’s utilization of these elements help bring further emphasis to his work in Starry Night.