“My studio! But I never have had one, and personally I don’t understand why anybody would want to shut themselves up in some room. Maybe for drawing, sure; but not for painting.” —Claude Monet, 1880
50 paintings by Claude Monet… the father of Impressionism… will be exhibited at the North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh from October 15, 2006 through January 14, 2007. The exhibition is titled “Monet in Normandy” and is a once in a life time experience for people in Eastern NC. Don’t miss it… Tami and are going this Saturday!
Monet in Normandy exhibition poster above and other items available for sale at the North Carolina Museum of Art online store.
The birth of modern science and the Industrial Revolution in 18th century Europe supplied an unprecedented expansion in the artist’s palette. More than 20 intense yellow, green, blue, red, and orange pigments were invented between 1800 and 1870. The impressionists took advantage of the new pigments’ inherent chromatic and physical properties to forego the laborious techniques of traditional academic painting for a quicker and more direct painting style. But yet another invention helped make the impressionist revolution possible. A frustrated South Carolina painter named John G. Rand invented the collapsible metal paint tube (patented in 1841)—and suddenly paint became portable. Now the impressionists could leave the studio and academic painting behind. Moving outdoors, they could seize the flickering light and capture the pulsing life around them.
Claude Monet is one of the world’s best-loved artists. His images of Normandy—its poppy fields, poplars, haystacks, Rouen Cathedral facade and, above all, its extraordinary coast—are regarded by art historians as revolutionary. The Normandy paintings embody a new vision, a fresh way of seeing, that assured Monet a place among the giants of art.
In Normandy Monet first began painting outdoors, en plein air. This was a relatively novel practice, and it proved to be a revelation for Monet. He later described the experience “as if a veil had been torn away,” and it determined what he would paint, and how he would paint, for the rest of his life. Monet is acknowledged as the preeminent master of impressionism. In fact, one of his early Norman paintings—his view of the harbor at Le Havre entitled Impression: Sunrise—gave the movement its name.
Monet in Normandy is the first scholarly exhibition to deal with the region of France in which the artist spent most of his life and created most of his paintings. Born in Paris, Monet moved with his parents to the coast of Normandy as a small child, beginning an intimate, lifelong relationship with the region and La Manche, the English Channel. His earliest pictorial experiments were created on or near its shores, and he returned to Normandy many times over the course of his career. In the 1880s Monet moved his family to Giverny, in the southeastern corner of Normandy, where he painted the village and surrounding fields. He also created a private garden and water lily pond that became his primary artistic focus in the decades before he died there in 1926, at the age of 86.
The exhibition features 50 paintings by Monet, borrowed from public and private collections in the United States, Europe, and Japan. These works span the artist’s entire career, beginning with early seascapes painted along the north coast of Normandy in the 1860s, such as The Pointe de la Hève, Monet’s first successful submission to the prestigious Paris Salon, and his earliest masterpiece, the Garden of Sainte-Adresse.
The exhibition treats Giverny as part of Normandy and features important paintings of the village and surrounding fields and rivers as well as a number of water lily pond paintings. These offer a complement to the seaside images, which until now have largely dominated the idea of Monet’s Normandy. The exhibition thus reveals the fullness and complexity of the artist’s “image” of the region—its rural and coastal aspects and the grandeur and historical importance of its capital city, Rouen, as well as the intensely personal vision expressed in the water lily paintings, which consumed Monet for the last 30 years of his life.
Monet in Normandy is the first comprehensive exhibition of Monet’s paintings to be shown in the Southeast. Featuring more than 50 impressionist masterpieces of the highest quality and significance, it promises to be a once-in-a-lifetime experience for Museum visitors.
Source: NCMuseum.org ~ Monet in Normandy
I decided to paint a small painting from a photo a friend of mine took of Monet’s home at Giverny in the Impressionistic style attributed to him. I have only seen his works in books and online at this point so I wanted to paint this more of how I think Monet paints… I plan to do more works after viewing the exhibit and seeing how he paints. What a treat this Saturday will be.
Monet’s Home at Giverny… 6″x8″ oil on canvasboard, alla prima, November 22, 2006.
This original oil painting is for sale… click here for details.
More about the exhibit after I see it…
Bernie
