The most famous paintings by Claude Monet. Beautiful and famous paintings by Claude Monet

Art and design

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23.01.15 11:24

A strict father (no wonder he headed the department of the French Ministry of Justice) Auguste Manet forbade his son to paint - he wanted his son to continue his work and become a lawyer. But contrary to the wishes of the family despot, Edward became a well-known artist, one of the brightest representatives of impressionism. The most famous paintings by Manet adorn the Louvre, museums in Berlin and other famous collections of paintings.

Master's still lifes

The Louvre keeps one of these masterpieces with the simple name "White Peonies". Already in this work, the characteristic manner of the Frenchman is manifested - broad strokes, a restrained palette. A pair of lush flowers on a dark background - and nothing more, but how alive!

At the beginning of his career, after a trip to Brazil that enriched the inner world of the future genius of the brush, Edouard Manet painted mainly landscapes and still lifes. He returned to them at the end of his life. "Still Life with Salmon" refers to 1969. The painter was a famous gourmet - like many of his compatriots. You look at such works - and the saliva flows!

These alluring female images

Not only "dead nature" attracted the master, but also portraits. One of them is Madame Manet on a blue sofa. Dutch Susanna Leenhof was a music teacher for the younger brothers of the artist. They say that the head of the family, Auguste, was carried away by the girl. Edward himself was also crazy about Suzanne, their romance lasted almost a decade. After the death of the priest, Manet was able to marry the chosen one. She is the mother of his son Leon and his favorite model.

Lola from Valencia is another of Manet's most famous paintings. The squat Spaniard is depicted by Manet against the backstage. Here he very carefully writes out all the details - both the appearance of the most posing woman and her intricate outfit. Each fold of clothing, patterned curve and glitter of jewelry - everything in this portrait plays its own special role.

A completely different mood is conveyed in the image of the dressing lady of the demimonde - "Nana". The morning of a representative of the most ancient profession begins with the usual toilet, she is still in negligee (in a corset and shirt). The noisy evening is still far away, and a vague smile wanders on the devil's face. A certain Henrietta, who became famous for her love affairs, posed for the artist.

Favorite places in Paris

Genre scenes gradually replaced the former artistic affections of the Parisian. He drew inspiration from various places in his beloved city. One of these places was the Tuileries Garden - bohemians liked to walk in it on Sundays. The painting “Music in the Tuileries Garden” depicts a lot of characters, but the faces are blurred - this canvas must be viewed from a fairly large distance, otherwise you will see only blurry spots.

At the words “Railway”, you probably imagine a puffing mighty steam locomotive or a swift modern train rushing along the rails into the distance. But Edouard Manet is not so simple! The paintings of the master are sometimes very conditional. Here, on the famous work of the Frenchman "Railway", the steel line is only guessed - there, behind the heavy iron grate, to which the baby clung. And her mother (or governess?) sits nearby, holding a book and a dog in her hands.

Among the flowers and at the table

Other genre scenes, too, seemed to be snatched out by a vigilant camera - here is a couple enjoying the aroma of flowering plants ("In the greenhouse").

And here is another couple - they are engaged in a leisurely conversation at the set table, and in the background a waiter is staring at these two, carrying an order to someone. The painting is called “In Papa Lathuille’s Tavern”.

Manet's masterpieces - paintings that caused controversy

All the same Quiz Myoran (the woman from the painting "Railway"), completely naked, appears before the audience of the infamous "Breakfast on the Grass". The author was reproached for decadence and shamelessness. I wonder what the artist was thinking when he depicted a naked lady looking directly at you, in the company of men (who, unlike a companion, are dressed)? By the way, the painter's brother and future brother-in-law posed for a relative.

Olympia caused even more controversy in its time (1863). The Frenchman painted it for the Paris Salon, where the image was booed by the public. As if Manet was the first author to flaunt the female body! The Renaissance is famous for its masterpieces in the nude style, but what about Rembrandt's "Danaë"?.. Now the masterpiece is kept in the collection of the Musée d'Orsay in Paris.

Maestro's swan song

Before his untimely death, the maestro created his last canvas - “The Bar at the Folies Bergère”. It became an exhibit of another Paris Salon (1882). The scene of the picture is a bar located on the first floor of the popular metropolitan variety show. Right there, the painter began work on his creation. The central figure is a barmaid behind the counter, looking at the viewer with a longing look in her eyes, and a motley crowd is running around in the background. The master managed to convey this “loneliness in the crowd” simply brilliantly! On the last April day of 1883, Edouard Manet died, but his paintings are immortal.

Very often this artist is confused with his fellow artist Edouard Manet. Both of them are artists, but of a very different style... Although they even converge in their canvases somewhere, they are still different. Yes, and they have different ways of starting development. But still about Claude Monet. This artist started out as a caricature. Yes, from the very, perhaps, light and not easy genre of painting. His caricatures appeared from the school bench, when, not wanting to study, he drew more and more. I drew my classmates, my teachers, my neighbors. Monet did not justify the hopes of his parents, did not continue the work of his father, but became famous throughout Le Havre, this is the city where he lived, thanks to his caricatures. Moreover, to the surprise of his parents, he began to earn money on this, selling his works to those whom he portrayed for twenty francs. There were so many cartoons that in a local shop they were displayed in several rows in a window. There, on this showcase, paintings by another artist, Eugene Boudin, were sold. The works of this artist, on the contrary, were not valued and were even considered vulgar, although they were only local landscapes. And the young Monet was infuriated that Boudin's works took up a lot of space and he could not put his own more. The owner of the shop tried many times to introduce them, but it still did not work out. But once it did happen, and since then it is believed that Monet began to turn from a caricaturist into a painter.

It was Boudin who became Monet's first teacher. It was he who gave him the first skills of the painter. He taught me to draw not only caricatures, but also simply depict landscapes, still lifes, portraits. And he opened a different world of painting, the inner one, which is not visible to everyone.

Somehow, after that, almost everything began to take shape successfully. It was Boudin who insisted that the guy visit Paris and try to find out about entering the Academy of Arts. Monet's parents were neither against nor for ... they hesitated, but still they allowed their son to just go on reconnaissance ... And Claude Monet ended up in Paris. And immediately visited the exhibition of artists, then he himself showed his work. They were praised, but still drew attention to some shortcomings. Monet decides to stay in Paris for as long as he can. Parents stopped helping, because the son was not going to study. It’s good that there was an aunt who provided money, and then actually saved his life by buying him out of the army, where he managed to catch a “fashionable” disease - typhoid fever. There was then an attempt to enter the University at the Faculty of Arts, but he got bored there and left. And ends up in Gleyer's studio. There he meets Basil, Sisley and Renoir. It was these artists who would later become the backbone of the Impressionist group and, in general, the artistic direction in general - impressionism, it was Claude Monet who gave the name to this direction. And it all started with his canvas - “Impression. Rising Sun". This is the beginning of what still amazes many and at the same time causes a lot of controversy. Notice so far.

Further, Monet was not broken by personal losses. He lost his first wife, then, having married a second time, he lost this wife as well. The worst thing is the loss of a son. And then he himself fell seriously ill, and this illness threatened him with the fact that he would stop painting. A double cataract is a disease that got in his way, but after undergoing two operations, he did not give up his talent and continued to create. And then the unexpected happened: due to operations and changes in the eye, he began to see some colors in the ultraviolet. And because some colors he saw quite differently. Until the last day, Monet did not lower his brush, he painted canvases and continued to amaze his fans with his talent.

Alexey Vasin

Creation

The rapid development of European painting at the end of the 19th century provoked an involuntary crisis of the genre. Despite the fact that Europe of those years gave the world many talented masters, society felt tired of the social themes that had become too common in painting. There was discontent among the artists themselves.

Claude Monet, considered the founder of French impressionism, at the beginning of his career faced both rejection of the movement he initiated, and an enthusiastic passion for it. It all started after the artist, upon returning from London, created a landscape in one evening, which depicted the setting sun, illuminating the sea with red rays. Monet called the painting simply “Sunrise. Impression".

By this, he wanted to emphasize that he did not try to sketch nature exactly, but only convey the impression of what he experienced while looking at the sunrise. The picture made an unexpected sensation. Some critics were dissatisfied with such a frivolous approach to painting, others were delighted, as they discovered a new way of conveying reality.

Impressionism (from the French "impression") is characterized by a subtle approach to displaying reality. Only the first impression is sketched, the movement of the texture of clothes, hair, trees, water and even air is conveyed with dynamic strokes. Impressionist paintings are airy, mobile, full of pure colors and delicate halftones.

Monet's paintings are fully consistent with this style. At the beginning of the 20th century, the artist created a series of landscape paintings that glorified him for many decades to come. Such canvases include "Water Lilies", "Mannaport", "Water Lilies", "Field of Poppies at Argenteuil". All these paintings are painted with light strokes that convey the breath and fabric of living and inanimate matter. Society, tired of serious topics, reacted with gratitude and enthusiasm to the simple subjects in Monet's paintings.

The artist concentrates on conveying the mood of the same place at different times of the year and day. Then the famous series of paintings "Haystack" is born. Depicting the same topic over and over again, Monet finds new angles, new solutions in the transfer of reality.

The artist is characterized by a special perception and style of rendering white. In his paintings, pure white does not seem to exist. Instead, white water lilies, and white foam on the waves, and clouds have bluish, bluish and lilac shades. Monet, like the rest of the Impressionists, avoided black in his paintings. Instead, they used purple paint.

Many of Monet's paintings are characterized by a romantic and airy perception of urban landscapes. The artist's painting "Parliament Building at Sunset" is one of the most expensive paintings in the world. Monet managed to capture the London Parliament there, shrouded in the famous fog and clouds.

The paintings of Claude Monet are a kind of measure of the artistic value of impressionism. His canvases adorn the paintings of the world's largest museums, including the St. Petersburg Hermitage and the Pushkin Museum in Moscow.

Igor Chergeiko

Impressionism

The principle of optical color mixing, based on the phenomena of nature actually seen and realized by the artist, was used by the masters of impressionism with great artistic freedom. The special expressiveness of the texture of their paintings is not an end in itself, but a necessary way of expressing these creative aspirations. The Impressionists “sought to leave traces of how it was made in painting. They needed the viewer not to forget that he is on the verge between a mirror illusion and a canvas splattered with paints, writes M. V. Alpatov. “Only then will the 'miracle of art' take place before his very eyes.

The peculiar impression of the incompleteness of impressionist paintings, which so confused the contemporary viewer, is a consequence of their desire to capture the ephemeralness, mobility, “inconsistency” of the visible world. Such freedom and artistry are largely deprived of the later works of the neo-impressionists (more precisely, divisionists) with their rational theory of color separation and neutralization of the artist's handwriting. The desire of the Impressionists to “paint in color”, the almost complete disappearance of lines (drawings) in some works, make it very difficult, and sometimes impossible, to reproduce their painting in black and white.

The Impressionists were fundamentally opposed to any theorizing. According to Monet, art is “a free and sentimental interpretation of nature…theories cannot create pictures.” The so-called theory of impressionism came later; it was based on the artistic discoveries of the masters of this trend, on their ability to see the world directly, intuitively, on the figurative, non-conceptual thinking inherent in impressionism. The absolute confidence of the Impressionists in their visual perception, their desire to write “only what they see, and the way they see”20 gave rise to a value-based new conventionality in art. And here it is appropriate to recall the words of Ch. Baudelaire, said by him in 1859, on the threshold of emerging impressionism: “Sometimes the deliberately conditional turns out to be infinitely closer to the truth, and most of our landscape painters lie precisely because they try to be too truthful.”

However, as impressionism evolved, already from the end of the 1870s, the “obviously conditional” in it began to gravitate more and more towards decorativism: the gradual weakening of plastic moments in painting (space and volume), the assertion of a flat pictorial surface, the replacement of natural color vision with conditional tonal effects , "filtering" the colorful diversity of the depicted world, the division of the composition according to the principle of juxtaposing color zones - qualities that connect impressionism with some trends in the art of the turn of the century. And yet, decorativeness never became the main principle of the Impressionist style, even in the late period of Monet's work: local "planar" color and linearity are alien to the very poetics of Impressionism.

As already mentioned, impressionism did not appear suddenly. Many of his discoveries were prepared by the art of the 19th century, they seemed to be floating in the air. Let us recall at least the amazing words that O. Balzac put into the mouth of the old artist from the story “The Unknown Masterpiece”: “Strictly speaking, the drawing does not exist! Don't laugh, young man... The line is a way by which a person is aware of the effect of lighting on the appearance of an object. But in nature, where everything is convex, there are no lines: only modeling creates a drawing, that is, the selection of an object in the environment where it exists. Only the distribution of light gives visibility to bodies!.. Isn't this how the sun, the divine painter of the world, works? O nature, nature! Who ever managed to catch your elusive form? Balzac created the story in 1830; at the same time, in the dynamic, colorful painting of E. Delacroix, in the romantic paintings of J. M. W. Turner, in the landscapes of R. P. Bonington and J. Constable with their ever-changing sky, what was later taken into service by the born impressionism. The immediate predecessors of Monet, C. Pissarro and A. Sisley include C. Corot, landscape painters of the Barbizon school (especially the most poetic of them - C. Daubigny), as well as Monet's future teachers E. Boudin and J. B. Jonkind.

And yet, impressionism was a fundamentally new word in European art. Now, viewed from a great time distance, he himself acquired the character of the "classical" era of French painting. However, one must not lose sight of the fact that impressionism in painting went through a rather complex evolution: a new artistic vision of the world crystallized gradually, individual (noted above) features of the poetics of impressionism had a relatively greater or lesser degree of significance at different times and among different masters. Conventionally, the history of pictorial impressionism can be divided into periods of preparation (maturing of the new method) - the 1860s, heyday and struggle for new art - the 1870s, beginning in the 1880s, the crisis and creative differences (the last, 8th exhibition of the Impressionists 1886 coincided with the collapse of the group) and late - from the 1890s until the end of the life of Degas, Renoir, Monet.

In none of these periods of its development was impressionism an absolutely dominant trend in French art. Simultaneously with the young artists, J. O. D. Ingres, C. Corot, G. Courbet, J. F. Millet, representatives of the older generation, continued to work; the history of impressionism chronologically includes the entire history of the so-called post-impressionism (Van Gogh, Cezanne, Gauguin, also Seurat, Signac, Toulouse-Lautrec). Almost simultaneously with Impressionism, symbolism was born in art; during the life of the oldest impressionists, the Fauvists appeared and the birth of cubism took place. That is why some aspects of impressionism are now much more clearly perceived in the mirror of contemporary and later trends in art: almost none of the significant French artists of the late 19th century escaped the influence of impressionism. Creatively rethinking the lessons of impressionism and fundamentally rejecting much of it, these artists went further and laid the foundation for the art of our century.

In this "double perspective" of Impressionism, Claude Monet has a very prominent, but not exclusive place in the direction itself. Being primarily a landscape painter, he sought to restore the lost ideas about the unity of the world, where a person is inextricably linked with nature, with his environment. Monet discovered and brought to almost complete exhaustion some special qualities of the impressionistic perception of nature, the elements of light and air, in other words, the plein air side of impressionism, leaving other masters to develop other aspects of impressionist poetics.

Monet became the recognized leader of the Impressionists due to the exceptional qualities of his nature: strong-willed, energetic and purposeful, he was at the center of the struggle for new art, took an active part in organizing most of the exhibitions of artists in this direction, led the struggle for the posthumous recognition of the work of Edouard Manet. Always doubting his abilities and always searching, Monet, nevertheless, always knew how to cheer up his friends, inspire them with faith in their strength. Even for the incredulous, self-contained Cezanne, who moved so far away from everyone in his later work, Monet remained the only authority whose opinion he invariably listened to.

Svetlana Murina

The paradox of Monet's creativity

In two landscapes painted in Paris on the national holiday of June 30, 1878, Monet seems to reveal to us the very process of creating a picture. He feverishly hurries to capture the spectacle that accidentally opened from the window - a sea of ​​tricolor flags fluttering in the wind, the festive jubilation of the crowd.

The barely outlined verticals of the houses remind of the outlines of a street going into the distance, the drawing is completely dissolved in a whirlwind of saturated strokes of red, blue, and white. Monet's temperamental brush in these works anticipates the late Van Gogh, but how dissimilar is the excitement of the artist, captured by the beauty of the motif, from the inner turmoil that is read in the works of the Dutch master! Again, as in the landscape “Impression. Sunrise”, one can state the paradox of Monet’s creativity: the greater the spontaneity of perception, the artist’s trust in his eye and first sensation, the further he is from an objective perception of reality, the more deformed the subject of his image.

If the photographer had captured the view of the Rue Saint-Denis on the same day, then everything that is torn, fragmented, in the process of becoming, which is so striking in Monet's painting, would appear stopped, ordered and, perhaps, more prosaic. Monet least of all achieves the illusion of reality: through the decomposition of the visual image into separate color elements, the emancipation of color separating from objects, the decoupling of the material world, he leads the viewer to a synthesis, a holistic perception of the depicted. This "suggestive transformation" of the image also requires from today's viewer, who is accustomed to many extremes in contemporary fine art, a special tension when getting acquainted with Monet's paintings.

In the autumn of 1878, Monet rented a house in the small town of Vetheuil near the capital. Here, together with him, his seriously ill wife and two children, the family of the bankrupt banker and collector Oshede settled. Camille Monet died in September 1879; the last time the artist paints her face, but this time the face of Camille eludes the artist, he is immersed in a restless sea of ​​intersecting strokes of faded shades of purple, blue, yellow. Their light web is like a mysterious cover that separates life from death. Much later, Monet said to Georges Clemenceau: “Once, standing at the head of a deceased woman who had always been very dear to me, I caught myself looking at her tragic forehead, mechanically looking for traces of a consistently growing degradation of color that death caused on this motionless face. Shades of blue, yellow, gray - how do I know what! This is what I have come to ... This is how, under the influence of our inherent automatism, we first respond to the impact of color, and then our reflexes, regardless of our will, again include us in the unconscious process of a monotonously flowing life. Like cattle that turns a millstone.”

This recognition allows you to see the hidden drama of Monet's work. The artist was often and unfairly accused of dispassion, of the absolute predominance of optical perception over emotional. Meanwhile, the very aestheticization of the image in this case of the image of death is an act of will that transforms the initial motive impulse into an artistic experience. Feeling underlies Monet's work no less than visual impression; even in the serene contemplation of the late cycle of "water lilies" (we will talk about it below), notes of genuine elegiac poetry sound. The clear and optimistic mood of most of Monet's works is the side that faces the viewer, as well as the restrained, calm manner of the artist, which invariably attracted the sympathy of his contemporaries. For impressionist artists (primarily Monet and Renoir), such an internal dissonance between life and work is the innermost essence of their art, it must always be borne in mind: without this, the assessment of the work of the masters of impressionism becomes one-sided and simplified.

The painful experiences of Monet, which overshadowed the first year of his stay in Vetheuil, were expressed with unexpected force in the gloomy melancholy winter landscapes of this time (“Snow Effect at Vetheuil”, 1878, Louvre, Paris; “Entrance to Vetheuil”, 1879, Art Museum, Gothenburg ) with their feelings of loneliness and numbness. Monet's financial situation became especially difficult after the death of Camille, when he had a large family in his arms - his two young sons were brought up with the five children of Alice Oshede, who became their second mother (Monet's marriage to Alice was registered only in 1892). Only after the arrangement in 1880 of a small solo exhibition in the premises of the editorial office of the magazine La Vie Moderne, Monet, with the support of Durand-Ruel and the publisher Charpentier, gained confidence in his financial affairs. From now on, he was relieved of the worries of selling his works and could devote himself entirely to creativity.

Since the early 1880s, Monet's painting style has been gradually changing. He increasingly works in the studio; sometimes there appears in his paintings that “madeness” that can be considered a compromise between working on the first impression and the reflective consciousness of the artist working from memory. An example of this approach to creating a landscape is the large painting "Lavacourt" (1880, Museum of Fine Arts, Dallas), intended for the Salon. Despite the fact that this landscape was extremely unsuccessfully placed in the exhibition (at a height of almost six meters from the floor, in a close environment of other works - such an absurd hanging of paintings has always been practiced in the Salons), it was noted by critics. One of them (Chennevière) even wrote that "the bright and clear atmosphere made all other neighboring landscapes appear black in this gallery of the Salon." However, by this time, impressionism had already won a firm place - at least in the minds of critics.

Even such a principled “subverser” of Monet, as the famous symbolist writer J.C. Huysmans, changed his attitude towards the artist after the seventh exhibition of the Impressionists (1882): “How truthful his foam is on the waves falling into a ray of light, the rivers shimmering in thousands shades of objects that they reflect; in his canvases, the cold breath of the sea resembles the fluttering of leaves, the light rustle of grass ... it is to him and his fellow impressionists, masters of the landscape, that we should be grateful for the revival of the art of painting. Messrs. Pissarro and Monet finally emerged victorious from a hard struggle. It can be said that in their canvases the complex problem of light is resolved ... ".

Huysmans' characterization can be attributed to that stage of Monet's work, which the artist himself considered to have passed. The search for new themes and images leads him to create a whole cycle of still lifes, executed in the early 1880s; like the landscape, this genre was Monet's favorite area of ​​\u200b\u200bcreativity. "Flapjacks" (1882, private collection, Paris) is an example of a typical impressionistic composition, where the connection between objects and even their location seem random (some are cut off by the edge of the frame). Seen from a close distance, this fragment of inanimate nature is perceived as a landscape with an unexpressed clearly (and therefore infinite) depth, where a white tablecloth with cold blue reflections looks like a snow-covered space. The best of the still lifes of this time are images of flowers and fruits. Their decorative linearity, inscribed in a narrow vertical format (“Dahlias” and “White Poppy”, 1883, private collections), anticipate the birth of Art Nouveau (Art Nouveau) in French art.

In the 1880s, Monet quite often turned to a "pure" portrait - usually a bust image on a neutral background. Monet was not a master of a psychological portrait in the sense of the word that applies to E. Manet or E. Degas. It would be more accurate to say that he never sought to cross the line that would lead to penetration into the inner world of another person. Monet's portraits characterize, first of all, his own inner isolation and emotional restraint; he endows those portrayed with his mood, and this gives them a shade of cold aloofness. Models of Monet's portraits are inevitably immersed in themselves, they are inactive (despite the liveliness of the artist's brush), separated from the environment and seem to be in an immaterial world. An excellent example of such autocharacteristics is "Self-Portrait in a Beret" (1886, private collection, Paris).

Claude Monet - the national pride of France, was born in Paris in 1840, on November 14th. The artist died in his estate, the village of Giverny in 1926 (December 5). One of the founders of a new direction in painting - impressionism, he influenced the development of artists around the world. We will describe some of Monet's paintings in this article.

Stages of creativity

In Paris, the artist enters the Imperial School of Fine Arts, but quickly leaves it, as routine reigns in it. Monet's paintings are natural and show the play of light. In 1865 - 1870 he painted the canvases "Woman in a Green Dress", "Women in the Garden", "Breakfast on the Grass", "Port Trouville". But these paintings by Monet are not successful at exhibitions and do not sell well.

"Impression. Sunrise"

In 1872, the artist creates an iconic canvas, which is now in Marmonttan-Mont in Paris. It was written in the port of Le Havre and gave the name to lʹimpressionnism, which would later be accepted by critics and the public. In the meantime, Monet's paintings are ridiculed by critics. The public willingly buys them at very low prices.

Description of the painting by Monet

A photograph of the artist's painting can be viewed in detail in this article. A grayish-bluish fog covers the entire canvas. In the foreground, the silhouettes of fishermen's boats are still quite clearly visible, and in the background, cranes at the pier, sailing ships, and smoke coming from pipes are slightly visible. The sea and the sky are made in bluish-greenish, soft colors. There is no contrast transition between the horizon line and the sea. A small orange disk of the sun floats out of the fog. Its light is reflected on the clouds and runs along the water in a path.

1877 series of paintings of the Saint-Lazare station

The artist painted 12 paintings of this series in various weather conditions and from different angles of view. By this time, working tirelessly and hard, Claude Monet creates new canvases. Paintings with titles: "Jean Monet on a horse", "Bridge at Argenteuil", "Walk". Subsequently, "Hacks" and "Waters" will be written in series.

Gare Saint-Lazare (1877)

This is the third picture in the series. She is at the Art Institute of Chicago. To write the entire series, the artist set up a workshop for himself right at the station. Monet was inspired by the fact that he was a witness to the industrial revolution. He was interested in both the building itself, consisting of metal structures and glass, and steam locomotives, letting off steam, passengers hurrying to them. The bluish-greenish color suggests that the sky has been covered with clouds, and the rays of the sun do not peep through. The powerful outlines of a steam locomotive standing in the distance, ready to be sent, perfectly convey the spirit of modernity.

Passion for Japanese art

Engravings brought from Japan began to spread throughout Paris. Their unusual technique, Hokusai's compositional solutions in the Views of Mount Fuji series left their mark on Monet's Haystacks series. These paintings by Monet with variously arranged haystacks, illuminated in the morning, afternoon and evening, clearly follow the outlines of Mount Fuji. From a slightly different angle, the artist's wife, Camilla, became interested in this art.

Portrait of Madame Monet

Claude Monet painted pictures exclusively in the open air. This is one of the rare pieces created indoors for decorative and commercial purposes (for sale). Attention is focused on a woman in a light-colored wig in a scarlet kimono, which attracts attention not only with bright colors, but also with gold-embroidered ornaments. A carefully painted samurai in a blue kimono with swords is especially good on him. The static pose of the model is balanced by the dynamics of the fans attached to the wall and scattered across the floor. They are also pierced by oriental themes: storks, portraits of Japanese women, fish.

Last years

Monet's paintings are still written in series. You can call "Poplars", "Cathedrals of Rouen", "Thames in London", "Water Lilies". After 1900, a recognized meter appears before us, which no longer has material worries. Exhibitions bring success and money. He buys a small piece of land in Normandy. His estate is called Givenchy. In it he arranges a pond and breeds water lilies. But after an operation on his eyes, since he had a cataract, the artist begins to see everything in lilac-bluish tones.

We offer you to look at one of Monet's last works with nymphs. The change in color did not affect the lovely waterscape. Water lilies are not white, but bluish, with pinkish tints, and the water is saturated purple.

The middle-aged artist was very fond of growing plants in his garden and liked to take walks in it. By the end of his life, the revered painter, who made a revolution in classical art, could afford to work and rest as he liked.

Monet with his own eyes both in Russia and in other countries. However, his winter landscapes drew attention only recently. There are not so many of them: Monet preferred to paint the bright colors of summer - poppies, water, sailboats, blooming gardens.

4. Ice floes. Foggy morning. 1893

The temperature is above zero, so the ice has already opened up, and fog has appeared. White and blue colors are diluted with gray and brown.

This landscape of the Seine River is not the only one - Monet liked to paint in series, showing how the same place can be different depending on the time of day and weather.

Paintings by Claude Monet from the Ice Floats series. 1893 Private collections.

In one month from the end of January to the end of February 1893, Monet managed to create as many as 13 paintings of this landscape on the Seine!

5. Lavacourt. Snow and sun. 1881

The village of Lavacourt is located on the banks of the Seine, and opposite is the village of Vetheuil, in which Monet lived with his family and where his son was born, and his wife was also buried. It was from this shore that he depicted the landscapes of the village of Vetheuil in 150 of his paintings.

The dim winter sun in the painting "Lavakur" - we do not see it, but we feel it by the yellowish-greenish tint of snow in the distant background. It seems that Monet wanted to show the approach of spring.
Photo of the village of Veteil (near Paris)

In these places, of course, they remember their famous inhabitant. So, on the shore of the village of Lavacourt, information boards are made in the form of easels with paintings by Monet.

6. Road to Giverny in winter. 1885

The artist lived in Giverny for 43 years. In this town is his house-museum with the famous garden with water lilies and a Japanese bridge. Of course, he wrote Giverny countless times. Basically, these are flowering, summer works. However, the winter here is also very picturesque.

Claude Monet (Claude Monet) 1840-1926 One of the founders and leading artists of the Impressionist period. Biography and pictures.

Already at the age of 16, Claude Monet decided that real art was born in the open air, rejecting classical principles. His life was rich in events - he loved and suffered, overcame misunderstanding and bathed in the waves of success. He left behind a rich legacy, having tried many subjects, so that at the end of his life he would endlessly draw water lilies from his favorite pond on canvas.

Never before has fine art seen a creator more subtle and bold, carefully looking at nature, which allowed him to create a number of paintings so sensual and honest in their beauty that it was a kind of revelation for subsequent generations who chose Impressionism as their guiding star.

Movement to success, road of impressionism.

Claude Monet ended up in Paris at the age of 19. In the capital, he first studied at the Academy of Suissa, and then continued his education in the workshop of Charles Gleyre. It is not so important how strong the influence of this artist, popular at that time, was on the technical and stylistic development of the young Monet, but the fact that he gathered around him more than remarkable people is a fact. In the workshop, Claude Monet met Sisley, Renoir, Basil, with whom he would soon forge a new style in art.

In 1863, a huge scandal erupted in connection with the ultra bold and frank painting "Luncheon on the Grass" by Edouard Manet. Claude, inspired by this work, decided to write his own version. "Breakfast on the Grass" by Claude Monet clearly demonstrates the search for the style of a young master - the rejection of the contour, the neglect of the line by modeling forms with the help of color spots, experiments in the transmission of natural light on the canvas. For the multi-figure composition, the master used only two natures - all the ladies are painted from his beloved Camilla, and the men from his friend Basil. It is noteworthy that in this work, Monet depicted several characters with their backs to the viewer, thereby destroying one of the main canons of classical painting - such an image has hitherto been unacceptable.

But the young Monet moved on his way, tasting colors, plots, plasticity and composition. The work “Women in the Garden” is also distinguished by the same innovation, the model of which was also made by her beloved Camilla, “multiplied” four times on the canvas.

Monet's early works are overwhelmingly dedicated to Camille. “Lady in the Garden”, “Woman in a Green Dress” - on all these canvases the viewer will see Camille, and the last work brought fame to Claude. Subsequently, Monet will have another favorite model - his son Jean.

Style work.

The 60s were marked by a difficult financial situation for Monet. There is evidence that the painter even thought about suicide. However, Claude was saved from this desperate step by work - Renoir arrives at his estate in Bougival and his friends work a lot in nature, honing their skills, being in search of new means of expression. The main goal of their search was the moment - the artists sought to capture the moment, to have time to capture the same landscape in different time periods, proving to everyone to the world that a single moment is not like the previous or next, it is unique and beautiful with its inimitable beauty.

Monet began to practice a new technique of applying colors to canvas - he does not mix colors on the palette, as artists of past years did, preferring to apply pure colors, allowing the viewer's eye to mix the colors on their own, looking at the finished work.
In 1872, Claude Monet created the legendary painting “Impression. Sunrise". Its uniqueness is not only in the technique and color scheme, but also in the fact that this canvas gave the name to the whole direction. From this moment on, the whole world will know if small strokes of local colors prevail on the canvas, there is no line, and the space is filled with light - this is impressionism, from the French “impression”.
The legendary work was the start of the artist's success, followed by his best works - "Field of poppies at Argenteuil", "Capuchin Boulevard", "Saint-Lazare Station", etc. The work brought satisfaction, although the public did not always meet the master's paintings with delight.

1879 gave another reason to capture Monet's passing moment - his beloved Camille was dying, and with some painful attentiveness the artist painted her face, losing colors.

Recognition and peace.

Having lost his beloved woman, Monet finally gains recognition - critics write laudatory reviews, the public sympathizes with his work, and his financial situation improves significantly.

Monet begins to write cycles - a series of works dedicated to the same plot, executed in different surroundings, differing in time characteristics: the artist paints a landscape at different times of the year or day, or weather conditions. Examples of such works are the series "Rouen Cathedral", "Poplars on the Epte", "Poplars", "Parliament Building in London", etc.

In 1892, Monet married for the second time, and traveled a lot, enriching his gallery with delightful marinas.

And at sunset, the master comes to Zhivarny, where he sets up a garden with a pond and a bridge, considering all this natural splendor to be his best work of art. Drawing inspiration from his garden, the master created more than one series of paintings, his favorite of which was the one dedicated to water lilies.

The end of Monet's life cannot be called happy - his second wife passed away, and then his son Jean, the artist was overcome by a cataract, which led to actual blindness. However, just as the deafened Beethoven did not stop composing, so Monet did not discard his brushes, continuing to paint until his death in his beloved Zhivarni. In December 1926, Monet died. Having finished his life, he only began the artistic age - his paintings became the inspiration for many artists, both those who were a direct follower of impressionism, and those for whom he became the starting point, giving rise to many new stylistic "isms".