Delphi Works of Claude Monet (Illustrated) E-Book

Claude Monet

• Herausgeber: Delphi Classics
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Serie: Masters of Art
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Seitenzahl: 231

Beschreibung

This is the fourth volume of a new series of publications by Delphi Classics, the best-selling publisher of classical works. A first of its kind in digital print, the ‘Masters of Art’ series allows Kindle readers to explore the works of the world’s greatest artists in comprehensive detail. This volume presents over 500 paintings of the Impressionist master Claude Monet. For all art lovers, this stunning collection offers a beautiful feast of images by one of the most influential artists of the twentieth century.Features:* over 500 paintings, indexed and arranged in chronological order* special ‘Highlights’ section, with concise introductions to the masterpieces, giving valuable contextual information* beautiful 'detail' images, allowing you to explore Monet's celebrated works* numerous images relating to Monet’s life and works* learn about the history of the Impressionists and the celebrated works that shaped the art movement in the detailed biography THE FRENCH IMPRESSIONISTS by Camille Mauclair* hundreds of images in stunning colour - highly recommended for Kindle Fire, iPhone and iPad users, or as a valuable reference tool on traditional KindlesCONTENTS:The HighlightsLUNCHEON ON THE GRASSSELF PORTRAIT WITH A BERETTHE TERRACE AT SAINTE-ADRESSEWOMEN IN THE GARDENBATHERS-AT-LA-GRENOUILLÈREON THE BANK OF THE SEINE, BENNECOURTTHE MAGPIEPOPPIES BLOOMINGWOMAN WITH A PARASOLIMPRESSION, SUNRISEGARE SAINT LAZARE, ARRIVAL OF A TRAININ THE WOODS AT GIVERNY BLANCHE HOSCHEDÉHAYSTACKS, (SUNSET)ROUEN CATHEDRAL, FAÇADE (SUNSET)BRIDGE OVER A POND OF WATER LILIESHOUSES OF PARLIAMENT, LONDONWATER LILIESTHE GRAND CANAL, VENICENYMPHEASTHE ROSE-WAY IN GIVERNYThe PaintingsTHE PAINTINGS IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDERALPHABETICAL LIST OF PAINTINGSThe BiographyTHE FRENCH IMPRESSIONISTS by Camille Mauclair

Leseprobe

Claude Monet

(1840–1926)

Contents

The Highlights

Luncheon on the Grass

Self Portrait with a Beret

The Terrace at Sainte-Adresse

Women in the Garden

Bathers-At-La-Grenouillère

On the Bank of the Seine, Bennecourt

The Magpie

Poppies Blooming

Woman with a Parasol

Impression, Sunrise

Gare Saint Lazare, Arrival of a Train

In the Woods at Giverny Blanche Hoschedé

Haystacks, (Sunset)

Rouen Cathedral, Façade (Sunset)

Bridge Over a Pond of Water Lilies

Houses of Parliament, London

Water Lilies

The Grand Canal, Venice

Nympheas

The Rose-Way in Giverny

The Paintings

The Paintings in Chronological Order

Alphabetical List of Paintings

The Biography

The French Impressionists by Camille Mauclair

The Delphi Classics Catalogue

© Delphi Classics 2014

Version 2

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Masters of Art Series

Claude Monet

By Delphi Classics, 2014

COPYRIGHT

Masters of Art - Claude Monet

First published in the United Kingdom in 2014 by Delphi Classics.

© Delphi Classics, 2014.

All rights reserved.  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form other than that in which it is published.

ISBN: 978 1 90890 992 3

Delphi Classics

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Delphi Publishing Ltd

Hastings, East Sussex

United Kingdom

Contact: [email protected]

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The Highlights

Monet was born on the fifth floor of 45 rue Laffitte, in the 9th arrondissement of Paris

Claude Monet and his wife Camille Doncieux Monet, c.1860

THE HIGHLIGHTS

In this section, a sample of Monet’s most celebrated works is provided, with concise introductions, special ‘detail’ reproductions and additional biographical images.

Luncheon on the Grass

Claude Monet was born on 14 November 1840 in Paris; he was the second son of Claude Adolphe Monet and Louise Justine Aubrée Monet.  Five years later, his family moved to Le Havre in Normandy, where his father intended him to go into the family's ship-chandling and grocery business. However, the young Monet had very different plans. He wanted to become an artist and his mother, an accomplished singer, supported his desire for a career in art.

On 1 April 1851, Monet entered Le Havre secondary school of the arts, where he became renowned for his charcoal caricatures, which he would sell for ten to twenty francs. Monet also undertook his first drawing lessons from Jacques-François Ochard, a former student of the Neo-Classical master Jacques-Louis David. On the beaches of Normandy, he became acquainted with his fellow artist Eugène Boudin, who became his mentor and introduced him to oil paints. It is believed that Boudin also taught him "en plein air" (outdoor) techniques for painting — a later important convention for the Impressionists.

On 28 January 1857, Monet’s mother died suddenly. At the age of sixteen, he left school and went to live with his widowed, childless aunt, Marie-Jeanne Lecadre. On his arrival in Paris, he visited the Louvre and witnessed many painters copying from the old masters. Having brought his paints and other tools with him, he would instead go and sit by a window and paint what he saw outside.  Monet remained in Paris for several years and met other pioneering painters, including Édouard Manet and future Impressionists.

Luncheon on the Grass, which Monet completed in 1865 at the age of 25, is now considered by many to be his first youthful masterpiece.  Heavily inspired by Édouard Manet’s 1863 painting Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe, which caused great scandal in the Parisian art world, Monet’s painting portrays a similar scene.  Five well-to-do Parisians are enjoying the summer weather in the shade of a light-hearted picnic, located in the Fontainebleau Forest, just outside of Paris.  The experimental use of light, shadows and the blurring of natural shapes, such as the leaves, have been identified as precursors to Impressionism, which would later infuse the artist’s work.

Monet had hoped the painting would achieve recognition at the Paris Salon, as Manet had done in his previous work.  However, due to financial difficulties, which would go on to plague him throughout his younger years as an artist, Monet had to sell the painting to a creditor, who kept it locked up and unseen in a cellar for many years.

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‘Le déjeuner sur l’herbe’ by Édouard Manet, 1863

The Forest of Fontainebleau, where Monet worked on this painting

‘Forest of Fontainebleau’ by Paul Cézanne, 1892

Self Portrait with a Beret

Disillusioned with the traditional art taught at art schools, Monet became a student of Charles Gleyre in Paris, where he met Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Frédéric Bazille and Alfred Sisley. Together they shared new approaches to art, painting the effects of light en plein air with broken colour and rapid brushstrokes, in what would later be known as Impressionism.

Now privately owned, the following portrait was completed by 1886 and is the first known self-portrait of the artist.  In the painting, Monet gazes directly at the viewer, exhibiting his confidence in his art, as well as his personality, in a pose that is reminiscent of the great self-portrait Dutch painter Rembrandt.  The loose brushstrokes and unfinished appearance at the corners demonstrate the artist’s advances into what would later be termed Impressionism.

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‘Self Portrait with Beret and Turned-Up Collar’, by Rembrandt, 1659

The Terrace at Sainte-Adresse

This painting depicts Monet’s family in the garden of their home at Sainte Adresse, near Le Havre.  Facing a view of Honfleur on the horizon, Monet employed rapid, separate brushwork, blended with vibrant colour. The painting portrays Monet’s father in the foreground, Monet’s cousin Jeanne Marguérite Lecadre at the fence; Dr. Adolphe Lecadre, her father; and Lecadre’s other daughter, Sophie, as the woman seated with her back to the viewer. Monet’s relations with his father were tense at the time, owing to the family’s disapproval of his liaison with Camille Doncieux, a model. The stiff representation of the figures and looming dark clouds in the sky seem to hint at the difficult time Monet had when staying with his family in the summer of 1867.  Unable to see his mistress, who just given birth to their son, and disillusioned by his art not being recognised, Monet attempted suicide shortly after completing the painting.

The brushwork is clearly looser than in earlier paintings, as demonstrated by how the flowers, figures and sea are depicted, causing many critics to label this work as a forerunner of Impressionism. The painting is divided into three parts, including the terrace garden, the sea and the sky, which are all counterpoised by the vertical lines of the two flags, adding to the impressive compositional structure of the work.

The Terrace at Sainte-Adresse is now housed in the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, after being purchased in 1967, with special contributions given or bequeathed by friends of the Museum.

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Sainte-Adresse, today

Women in the Garden

Completed by 1867, this painting is now housed in Musée d’Orsay, Paris.  In the late 1860’s, Camille Doncieux (1847–1879) modelled for Monet on several occasions and became his favoured model, though she also modelled for Renoir and Manet.  In Women in the Garden, Camille was the model for all four women in the composition.

Monet had high hopes for this painting, which he began working on outdoors, having dug an open trench, allowing him to work on the upper areas, while still remaining outside.  The painting was then finished in his studio.  Nevertheless, when submitted to the fastidious Salon, the work was rejected, although success was drawing closer.

Camille and Monet were married in 1870 and she was a loyal and dependable wife, helping Monet battle depression and his suicide attempt, where he had tried to down himself in the Seine. Sadly, Camille died in her early thirties, most likely of pelvic cancer or tuberculosis. Reportedly, Monet painted her on her death bed.

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Camille Doncieux by Renoir

The Musée d’Orsay, where many Impressionist masterpieces are now housed

Inside the museum

Bathers-At-La-Grenouillère

During the late 1860’s Monet’s financial situation became strained and he found little solace, except for his close friendship with fellow artist Pierre-Auguste Renoir. On 25 September 1869, Monet wrote in a letter to Frédéric Bazille, “I do have a dream, a painting, the baths of La Grenouillère, for which I have made some bad sketches, but it is only a dream. Renoir, who has just spent two months here, also wants to do this painting.”

La Grenouillère was a popular middle-class resort consisting of a spa, a boating establishment and a floating café. It was promoted as ‘Trouville-sur-Seine’ and was easily accessible by train from Paris. The resort had recently been favoured with a visit by Emperor Napoleon III with his wife and son. Monet and Renoir both recognised in La Grenouillère an ideal subject for the images of leisure they hoped to sell.

Housed today in the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, Bathers-at-la-Grenouillère was completed in 1869 and is identified by many critics as Monet’s ‘breakthrough’ piece.  It is a bright and colourful portrayal of the pleasures of a summer’s day, with Parisians enjoying themselves, rendered by minimal brushstrokes.  Monet had journeyed to La Grenouillère with Renoir to prepare studies for his Salon paintings.  No longer having the financial means to execute large paintings, he produced this small composition, using radical thick brushwork and completing the piece outside –en plein air.  Monet concentrates on repetitive elements, such as the ripples on the water, the foliage, the boats and human figures, to arrange a complex fabric of brushstrokes that convey a strong descriptive quality.

The canvas won instant recognition for the artist, fuelling his confidence for future works that would challenge the Parisian art world’s pre-conceived notions of an acceptable composition.

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La Grenouillère, today

Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841–1919)

On the Bank of the Seine, Bennecourt

Housed as part of the Potter Palmer Collection in The Art Institute of Chicago, this painting was completed in 1868. It portrays Monet’s wife Camille, peering across the Seine at the suburb of Bennecourt. The bold use of colour, with stark contrasts of dark and light, underlines the artist’s innovative approach; however, it is the elusive depiction of light and reflection on the water that is for many the painting’s greatest accomplishment.

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The Magpie

Created during the winter of 1868 in the countryside near the commune of Étretat in Normandy, this painting is one of approximately 140 snowscapes produced by Monet. The patron Louis Joachim Gaudibert helped arrange a house in Étretat for Monet, Camille and their newborn son, allowing the artist to paint in relative comfort, surrounded by his family.

The canvas depicts a solitary black magpie perched on a wattle fence as the light of the sun shines upon freshly fallen snow, creating blue shadows. The painting features one of the first examples of Monet’s use of coloured shadows, which would later become a typical device used by the Impressionists. Monet and the Impressionists used coloured shadows to represent the actual, changing conditions of light and shadow as seen in nature, challenging the academic convention of painting shadows black.

At the time of its composition, Monet’s innovative use of light and colour led to the painting’s rejection by the Paris Salon of 1869. However, critics now classify The Magpie as one of Monet’s greatest achievements.  The painting hangs in the Musée d’Orsay and is considered one of the most popular paintings in their permanent collection.

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Cliffs in the commune of Étretat, Normandy, close to the setting of the painting

Poppies Blooming

Now housed at the Musee d’Orsay, this is one of several paintings by Monet set in a poppy field.  A woman and a child are seen, Camille and their son Jean, walking towards the right foreground, in a field near Argenteuil, where the poppies are vividly represented, making this one of artist’s most distinctive images. Poppies blooming was painted in 1873 and effectively evokes the atmosphere of a languid summer’s day.  Monet’s brushstrokes aim to capture the changing quality of light.

After returning from England, Monet had lived in Argenteuil from 1871 to 1878. The colourful landscape of the region allowed the artist to work en plein air, which he had already experimented with in early works. This painting reveals how passionate Monet was about his use of vibrant colours, as shown by the lurid blobs of red to depict the poppies, which are scattered across lush green fields.

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Woman with a Parasol

Completed by 1875, this painting now hangs in the National Gallery of Art, Washington.  Once more it depicts the artist’s wife Camille, holding a parasol, while walking in a field near Argenteuil.  Wistfully, she gazes down at the viewer, establishing a stance of superiority and dominance, whilst the much smaller figure of her son Jean also looks directly out of the painting. Broad brushstrokes simply portray the clouds and flowers, creating the impression of movement with the summer breeze, which stirs Camille’s veil.

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Impression, Sunrise

This famous painting gave rise to the name of the Impressionist movement. Completed by 1872, it depicts the harbour of Le Havre in France, with very loose brushstrokes that suggest an impression of the scene, rather than a realistic delineation of the subject. Monet later explained the purpose of the painting in a letter:

“Landscape is nothing but an impression, and an instantaneous one, hence this label that was given us, by the way because of me. I had sent a thing done in Le Havre, from my window, sun in the mist and a few masts of boats sticking up in the foreground....They asked me for a title for the catalogue, it couldn’t really be taken for a view of Le Havre, and I said: ‘Put Impression.’”

Impression, Sunrise was displayed in 1874 during the first independent art show of a group of painters that would later be known as the Impressionists. It was critic Louis Leroy’s hostile review of the show that encouraged the naming of the new art movement, when he titled it “The Exhibition of the Impressionists” in Le Charivari newspaper.

The painting was stolen from the Musée Marmottan Monet in 1985.  Five masked gunmen with pistols entered the museum and stole nine paintings from the collection. All together they were valued at $12 million.  A tip-off led to the arrest in Japan of a Yakuza gangster named Shuinichi Fujikuma, which then led to the recovery of the stolen paintings in a small villa in Corsica in December 1990. Impression, Sunrise has been back on display in Musée Marmottan Monet ever since.

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Louis Leroy, whose hostile review inadvertently named the Impressionist art movement

Musée Marmottan Monet, rue Louis Boilly, Paris, where ‘Impression, Sunrise’ is on permanent display

Gare Saint Lazare, Arrival of a Train

Monet was keen to not only create images of the countryside, but also to represent vivid impressions of urban life too.  In 1877, the artist rented a studio near the Gare Saint Lazare. At the time, the country was gripped by railway frenzy, as stations were appearing in many places across the country.  One day, dressed in his best clothes, Monet visited the station. Announcing himself as ‘Claude Monet the painter’ to the surprised train workers, they assumed he was a great Salon artist, and immediately cleared the station, so that he might paint undisturbed. 

That same year he exhibited seven paintings of the railway station in an Impressionist exhibition. These images demonstrated how impressionism was a diverse style, which was not only concerned with floral compositions, but could also be used to effectively portray a scene of busy city life.  In the following painting, Monet captures a single moment in time, where the great clouds of billowing steam, the busy workers and the colossal train are given a monumental appearance, celebrating the technology of the age.

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Paris Saint-Lazare, one of the six large terminus train stations of Paris and now immortalised by the artist

In the Woods at Giverny Blanche Hoschedé

This painting was completed in 1887 and depicts Monet’s fellow artist Blanche Hoschedé, who was both his stepdaughter and daughter-in-law.  Her mother, Alice Hoschedé, was the wife of a bankrupt department-store owner. After Camille’s death, she lived with Monet and eight children in Giverny, in what was deemed at the time a highly unconventional relationship.  They were only married in 1892, when Alice’s first husband died.  Blanche was the second daughter of Alice and she became an accomplished artist, having been trained and encouraged by Monet.

In 1914, aged forty-nine, Blanche returned to live at Giverny. Unlike the other women Impressionists, Blanche chose not to paint the domestic interior, where women are depicted looking after children, sewing or reading. Instead, Blanche chose to explore the countryside in her art, painting landscapes and sensitive portrayals of nature.

For women artists, en plein air painting was a liberating medium. It was a cheap and convenient option, when compared to renting a studio, hiring a model and the academic conventions of large scale works. A landscape painter’s equipment merely consisted of a field stool, a small easel, a canvas umbrella and a travel box for brushes and paints and it meant the artist could choose where and when she wished to work.

Blanche found it difficult to gain prominence in the art world due to her gender, although she was actively supported by her father-in-law, particularly by his respectful representation of her in his own paintings.  In the following image, Monet portrays Blanche at work, her palette in one hand, whilst she paints with the other. Straight-backed and confident, she works with determination. Her older sister Suzanne sits nearby, lounging against a tree. Monet often depicted the women of his family engaged in leisurely pursuits, but he tended to depict Blanche as being active and painting, underlining his respect for her work.

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Alice Hoschedé, Monet’s second wife

Blanche Hoschede by Monet, 1880

Monet beside Blanche

Haystacks, (Sunset)

This painting was completed by 1891 and is now housed in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.  It forms part of a series of paintings depicting stacks of hay in fields near Monet’s home in Giverny. The series included twenty-five works and was started in the summer of 1890 and continued through to the following spring, culminating in that year’s harvest. Monet’s thematic use of repetition allowed him to depict subtle differences in the perception of light across various times of day, seasons and types of weather.

Monet had settled in Giverny in 1883 and from that time on, most of his paintings, until his death 40 years later, portrayed scenes within two miles of his home. The haystacks themselves were actually situated just outside his front door.  The artist was intensely fascinated by the visual nuances of the region’s landscape and the variation in the seasons, which he strove to depict the impression of perceiving in his work.

The haystacks depicted in this painting are from 15 to 20 foot and functioned as storage facilities that preserved the wheat until stalk and chaff could be more efficiently separated.  The Norman method of storing hay was to use hay as a cover to shield ears of wheat from the elements until they could be threshed. The threshing machines traveled from village to village. Thus, although the wheat was harvested in July it often took until March for all the farms to be reached. These stacks became common in the mid 19th century. This method survived for 100 years, until the inception of combine harvesters. Although shapes of stacks were regional, it was common for them to be round in the Paris basin and the region of Normandy in which Giverny is situated.

The Haystacks series was a financial success. Fifteen of these paintings were exhibited by Durand-Ruel in May 1891, and every painting sold within days, for as much as 1,000 francs.  Additionally, Monet’s prices in general began to rise steeply. As a result, he was able to buy outright the house and grounds at Giverny and to start constructing a water lily pond. After years of financial difficulties, he was now able to enjoy success and live comfortably.

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Monet’s home at Giverny

Rouen Cathedral, Façade (Sunset)

This painting forms part of the Rouen Cathedral series, which depicts the façade of the Cathédrale Notre-Dame at different times of the day and year, reflecting changes in the edifice’s appearance under varying conditions.  Numbering more than thirty works in all, the series was begun in 1892 and completed in Monet’s studio in 1894. The artist rented spaces across the street from the cathedral, where he set up temporary studios for the purpose. In 1895, he selected what he considered to be the twenty best paintings from the series for display at his Paris dealer’s gallery and he had sold eight of these works before the exhibition was over. Artists Pissarro and Cézanne visited the exhibition and praised the Rouen Cathedral series highly.

Monet was keen to explore how light imparts a distinctly different character to a subject at different times of the day and the year, which he made a focal point of the series. By focusing on the same subject through a whole series of paintings, Monet was able to concentrate on recording visual sensations themselves. The subjects did not change, but the visual sensations, due to the mutable conditions of light, changed constantly.

In the following painting, Monet portrays the cathedral at sunset, where the bottom half of the canvas surrenders to dubious shadows, while the Gothic architecture above is infused with the day’s dying light, creating a sense of doomed grandeur. The subtle interweaving of colours, as well as Monet’s keen perception and his brilliant use of texture, all serve to create a poignant portrayal of the twilight hour.

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Rouen cathedral, 1822

The cathedral today

Bridge Over a Pond of Water Lilies

This famous painting was completed in 1899 and is now one of the most celebrated works in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.  Previously in 1893, Monet purchased land with a pond near his property in Giverny and he began building a water-lily garden, which would provide suitable motifs for him to include in his art.  He enlisted the services of a Japanese garden designer. Six years later, he began a series of eighteen views of the wooden footbridge over the pond, that summer completing twelve paintings, including the following image. The vertical format of the composition, unusual in the rest of the series, gives prominence to the water lilies and their myriad reflections on the pond.

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Monet, with an unidentified visitor, in his garden at Giverny, 1922

The same bridge now

Houses of Parliament, London

This painting was completed in 1904 and is now housed in Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris.  Monet created a series of paintings of the Palace of Westminster, home of the British Parliament, during his stays in London between 1900 and 1905. The paintings all have the same size and viewpoint from Monet’s window at St Thomas’ Hospital, overlooking the Thames. As in Monet’s other series, these works are painted at different times of the day and during varied weather circumstances, capturing the subtle differences of perceiving the same scene.

At this time Monet had abandoned his earlier working practice of completing a painting en plein air. He would now take the canvases back to Giverny, where he continued refining the images.  Therefore he had to send to London for photographs to help with the final preparations of the series. Although criticised harshly by some for this process, the artist was adamant it was ‘his own business’ how he went about his work, also arguing it was up to the viewer to judge the final result for themselves.

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St Thomas’ Hospital, where Monet painted the series

Palace of Westminster, today

Water Lilies

Monet’s series of Water Lilies is composed of approximately 250 oil paintings, which depict his flower garden at Giverny.  The series was the main focus of Monet’s artistic production during the last thirty years of his life. The majority of the works were created when the artist had very poor eyesight, due to his suffering from cataracts, which partly explains their enigmatic and unusual colouring.

During the 1920s, the state of France built a pair of oval rooms at the Musée de l’Orangerie as a permanent home for eight water lily murals by Monet. The exhibit opened to the public on 16 May 1927, a few months after Monet’s death.  Sixty water lily paintings from around the world were assembled for a special exhibition at the Musée de l’Orangerie in 1999.  Many of Monet’s water lily paintings have commanded enormous sums of money at auctions, as they are now identified as being among the most celebrated works of the twentieth century.

The following example is just one of the many images that comprise this beautiful series of paintings.  Housed in the Art Institute of Chicago, it was completed by 1906 and portrays an enticing mix of water and reflection, while flowers seem to drift peacefully in the bottom section of the canvas.  

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Musée de l’Orangerie

The Grand Canal, Venice

Painted in 1908, this painting is one Monet’s most accomplished works to emerge from his series of paintings in Venice.  Monet journeyed to the old city in the autumn of that year.  The series comprised 37 canvases, featuring a dozen different views, taken within a short distance of each another.  This painting, now housed in Boston, depicts the famous church Santa Maria della Salute, beside the Grand Canal, Venice’s main waterway and an inspiration for artists over hundreds of years.

Monet was 68 when he discovered Venice. He had already been in Italy, but no further than Bordighera on the Riviera. The opportunity afforded by an invitation from his English friend Mary Hunter persuaded him to make the journey. He and his second wife Alice stayed in the Barbaro Palace on the Grand Canal.

Once he saw the city, Monet was “gripped by Venice”. After several days looking for locations, he felt an urge to paint. According to Monet, he believed he only delved in “trials and beginnings” in Venice. Although the canvases were finished afterwards in his studio, they do not have the same impasto as other works. The suite of Venetian views he created suggest the pictures a tourist would like to bring home.