Why Did Monet Paint the Same Scenes Over and Over Again

"I must have flowers, always, and always." – Claude Monet

Anyone who's taken even the most rudimentary art history form can tell you that each artistic menstruum is led by a handful of artists whose names become synonymous with the move they champion. And perhaps the easiest example of this is Claude Monet. Of grade, it doesn't take whatever sort of form to know the proper name Monet. Beyond his invaluable contributions to impressionist art, Monet has gone on to become one of the most famous artists of all fourth dimension. And his favorite muse, flowers, went along with him for every step of the journey.

Claude Monet

Monet was born on November 14, 1840 in Paris, France. Monet's begetter, Adolphe worked in the family shipping business organisation while his mother, Louise, kept the abode. When Monet was five the family moved from Paris to Le Havre, a port town in the Normandy region. Monet was a decent student, but much preferred to be outdoors than cooped up in a classroom. He too discovered his love of drawing at an early age. A local landscape artist, Eugene Boudin, introduced Monet to plein air painting, otherwise known every bit painting outdoors. Monet had found a fashion to combine his two favorite pastimes. He never looked back.

In his early 20s, Monet moved back to Paris. Similar many young artists of the day, he spent his days surrounding himself with art at The Louvre. Only, unlike his contemporaries, Monet wasn't interested in refining his arts and crafts by copying the works of masters. Instead, he spent his days painting what he could meet out the window.

In 1861 Monet was drafted into Foreign Service and spent a yr serving in Algiers. Afterward leaving the service, he returned to Paris and threw himself dorsum into the art globe. He joined the private studio of Charles Gleyre and shared studio space with Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Frederique Bazille and Alfred Sisley.

Impressionism

Monet and his new friends, who also enjoyed painting and creating outdoors, became disillusioned with the art being pushed by the prestigious art schools of the day. During this time period, the highest honor an artist could hope for would be to have their work chosen for the exhibition past the Salon de Paris, the greatest art event of the Western World. Monet did accept 2 pieces called for exhibition in 1865 ( La femme à la robe verte or The Woman in the Greenish Clothes and a pocket-size landscape), only by and large, the Salon did not capeesh the new style Monet and his colleagues were experimenting with.

The accepted art of the time, the realism menstruation, focused on life-like representations of everyday life. Impressionism, on the other mitt, is nigh agreement the way light affects objects and color. And this was what fascinated Monet the near. He was so intent on depicting scenes equally they related to lite that he often painted the same scene over and over over again in varying low-cal so that it could be, in his optics, fully represented.

Frustrated past the lack of support from the largest authority in the fine art community, Monet and his friends decided to stage their ain show, the Anonymous Society of Painters, Sculptors, and Engravers, in 1874. At this start prove, Monet exhibited, among others, Impression, soleil levant ( Impression, Sunrise ). Information technology was from this painting'southward title that the fine art critic Louis Leroy coined the term "impressionism" to draw non only Monet'south art merely too the unabridged move he was representing. Though the term was meant as dismissive, the artists embraced the title; taking an insult and turning it into art history.

Clos Normand

Garden at Giverny

In 1879, Monet'due south wife and frequent muse Camille died of uterine cancer, leaving Monet extremely distraught. However, after several difficult months, Monet began to create some of the greatest works of his career and possibly of the 19 th century.

In 1883 Monet moved his family to Giverny. The holding at Giverney included a house, a barn used as a studio, orchards, and a garden. Monet spent much time designing and enjoying his garden, building information technology upwards as his fame increased and his fortune rose.

The main garden, known equally Clos Normand, stretches 100 acres and Monet designed it to exist a garden of perspectives, symmetries, and colors. Monet divided the country into flower beds set at varying heights and covered the primal alleyway with iron arches for climbing roses. He was interested in common, organized gardens and instead chose to pair according to color, daisies, and poppies next to rare flowers, and allowed them to grow freely.

Ten years after he commencement moved to Giverney, Monet bought another piece of land adjacent to his own and began work on what would become the inspiration for his lasting legacy.

The Japanese Footbridge and the Water Lily Pool, Giverny past Claude Monet

The Water Lilies

For his h2o garden, Monet took inspiration from the Japanese gardens in prints he collected. He even added a Japanese bridge; congenital by a local craftsman and became a centerpiece of many of Monet's later works.

Monet had the famous bridge was covered in wisterias and planted weeping willows. Of class, the real centerpiece of the garden was the water lilies. Local French white water lilies were planted forth with variation imported from South America and Arab republic of egypt. The mix of these different types of water lilies led to ponds dotted with yellow, blue, white, and pink.

Then, afterward six years spent creating the garden of his dreams, Monet began to paint information technology. As the historians who at present run his firm as a museum put information technology, "Never before had a painter so shaped his subjects in nature before painting them. And and so he created his works twice."

As he had always washed, he would pigment the same scene once again and once again, in different lights to capture its essence. He began with paintings where the Japanese bridge was the focal signal and then loved onto the large-scale series of water lilies that would occupy the next 20 years of his life and become his most well-known works.

Nymphéas ( Water Lilies ) consists of around 250 oil paintings of Monet'southward lily pond. Staying true to his impressionistic roots, the paintings vary between almost lifelike representations to practically abstract. It should be noted, however, that Monet'due south eyesight, while never corking, was deteriorating rapidly at this time.

In 1923 Monet had two surgeries to remove cataracts. His paintings of the water lilies earlier and after his surgery are noticeably changed. Because people with cataracts perceive cherry easier than other colors, the paintings were washed before the surgeries accept a general reddish tone. Later the surgeries, when he was able to see a wider range of ultraviolet wavelengths his paintings took on a bluer hue. In fact, he fifty-fifty went back and repainted some of his earlier piece of work in include more bluish water lilies.

In 1926, at historic period 86, Monet died of lung cancer. Monet'south only son and heir, Michel, gave his home and garden at Giverney to the French Academy of Fine Arts in 1966. The manor had fallen into disrepair following WWII and it took well-nigh x years to restore the garden and house to the level Monet had kept them at.

Today, Monet's home and garden in Giverny exist every bit a museum and people come from all over the world to walk among the types of flowers Monet himself picked out and gaze at the lily pond that inspired hundreds of masterpieces. Monet'southward paintings hang in museums across the globe, but it's just in Giverny that people tin can see the works he created first.

For more information on the impact of florals on impressionism, check out Chrysanthemums Beat Information technology In Impressionist Paintings.

Sources:

https://www.biography.com/people/claude-monet-9411771

https://world wide web.claude-monet.com/

http://giverny.org/gardens/fcm/visitgb.htm

Clos Normand Paradigm Source (resized):

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