Claude Monet, "Woman With a Parasol, Madame Monet and her Son"


   It is a beautiful windy Spring day so I thought this wonderful image would be appropriate for this week.  Is there a period of Art more liked and more famous than Impressionism and its great founder, Claude Monet (1840-1926)?  With such a beautiful image as this, it is difficult to grasp why Monet and fellow painters had such a rough beginning.  But they did.  To Monet the way light fell and reflected color was everything, a revolutionary idea in his day.   He painted outdoors stressing air and the movement of it and our painting this week is a perfect example.

   When done in 1875 , Monet was still a struggling artist.  In our scene, it appears he is sitting down from his wife, most likely on a hill, as the son seems to be on the far side of the incline.  The sun is strong casting deep shadows in the tall grass.  
    So consider this a problem:  if you taught painting and directed students to paint the wind,  how would you guide them?  A study of our painting of the week would be perfect instruction.  Here, one can almost feel it.  It is blowing her skirts and her vail.   She maybe having difficulty holding onto her parasol.  Plus the broken, swirls of white clouds and the lack of detail in the tall, leaning grass punctuate what we already know: a very sunny, windy day.  
   Remember this is an Impressionist painting - impression!  Monet wants us to see the way he believes we actually do see, when we are out-of-doors and the world is moving by.   Not in exact detail.  
    I find the composition interesting.  The subjects are in the center, with Madame Monet turned enough creating an important space to our right.  Clearly the large foreground of grass and the huge sky become as essential to the artist's intent.  This is not a portrait of two people, but it is the solution to our classroom problem, perfectly and beautifully accomplished 
   Woman With a Parasol, Madame Monet and her Son was painted in 1875.  She is Monet's first wife, Camille Doncieux Monet and the son is Jean Monet, their oldest of two.   A year or so after this painting Camille became ill eventually dying in 1879 at age 32.  The painting is an oil on canvas measuring 3' 3" high and 2'8" wide.   It is part of the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.  
   Make Art a part of your life, it's a beautiful thing to do.  

Comments

  1. Char HarguthMarch 29, 2021 at 4:57 PM

    This is such a beautiful painting; I can almost hear the wind. The vantage point of the artist looking up at his subject is unique. The sky/background seems endless and vast, making the two figures very prominent. This fashionable mother and her son are out enjoying this lovely day. He certainly achieves the windy atmosphere. Her hair seems to be blowing one way, and her skirt another. Soft colors make this such a fresh, rather simple, but very pleasing painting. I love the texture and variety of color in the foreground!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Wayne Thiebaud, Sunset Streets

Image
   In giving title to this landscape, California artist, Wayne Thiebaud not only provides the location, but also the time of day.  Knowing that Thiebaud is a California artist provides the last clue to guessing the probably location.  Smartly, The San Francisco Museum Of Modern Art purchased this painting for its permanent collection in 1986, a year after it was completed.  Sunset Streets is an oil on canvas measuring 48" x 35".      Wayne Thiebaud was born in 1920 and resides in California. He is one of several artists creating a distinct California aesthetic using heavy pigment and exaggerated color.   He is best known for his commonplace objects, figures, and landscapes. of which this is a perfect example.    The composition of this work is amazing.  Right down the center, at a slight tilt is this blue-black stripe, K shape, beginning with a heavy base and capped with a large triangle of sorts.  The painting is a geometry lover's dream, completely dedicated to ever
Read more

Nature Abhors A Vacuum, Helen Frankenthraller

Image
  Today let us look at an acrylic painting on canvas by American artist Helen Frankenthraller (1928-2011).    Nature Abhors a Vacuum is a huge work of art measuring 103" high, 112" wide.  This is over 8 feet high and 9 feet long!  You can stand next to it at the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C.; and to do so would completely immerse yourself in this huge spread of color.   Nature Abhors a Vacuum was painted in 1973 and is a perfect example of a school of painting Frankenthraller helped develop called color field painting.  Here she stretched raw unprimed canvas on the floor and poured thinned acrylic paint on it.  In doing so she created floating fields of translucent color.  Being that the canvas was raw, the paint stuck to the fabric more like it was dyed, than brushed on. It was an exciting and new process!    Our title, Nature Abhors a Vacuum  immediately indicates a landscape, however I think it a disservice to confine our reaction to so simple an understan
Read more

Childe Hassam "The Avenue in Rain"

Image
    I probably should have saved this for the 4th of July, but that is a little far off and this work is among Childe Hassam's finest.      I have known of Childe Hassam (1859 - 1935) for a very long time, but only recently did Wikimedia straighten me out about the correct way to pronounce his first name.  It seems the "e" is silent; and his last name is pronounced as written, with two syllables.        From what I have read, Hassam was a pretty sharp guy, and possibly a little  arrogant.  He created 3,000 some works of art in his career and lived his entire adult life on the proceeds of their sale.  This is quite remarkable.  Most artists, (at least before 1930) had to supplement their income by teaching, commissioned portraits or careers outside the art field.  But Hassam figured out not only how to market his work, but also what subjects would be popular.  Timing is always a big issue, and he was at the forefront of marketing impressionist paintings to Americans.      
Read more