Happy Catholic*: Monet

Thursday, April 18, 2024

Claude Monet: Self-Portrait with a Beret

Self-Portrait with a Beret, Claude Monet, 1886
via Wikipaintings

And here I thought I liked his nature paintings best. I like the rather startled gaze. Or perhaps it's a gaze of fierce intensity. Odd how I can't decide which it is. I'd never have thought of them being interchangeable until this moment.

Thursday, July 16, 2020

Rouen Cathedral series

Claude Monet did a famous series painting the facade of the Rouen Cathedral studying the changes that time of day and light make to appearance. I love these. See more images and read more here.

Friday, May 29, 2020

I am chasing a dream.

I am chasing a dream. I want the unattainable. Other artists paint a bridge, a house, a boat; and that’s the end. They’ve finished. I want to paint the AIR which surrounds the bridge, the house, the boat; the beauty of the air in which these objects are located; and that is nothing short of impossible. If only I could satisfy myself with what is possible.

Claude Monet

(Monet at Giverny by Caroline Holmes)

Woman in the Garden

Woman in the Garden
a study in the effect of sunlight and shadow on colour
Claude Monet

Friday, April 3, 2020

Monet in His Studio Boat

Monet in His Studio Boat, Eduoard Manet

Manet painted Claude Monet in his Studio Boat in the summer of 1874 at Gennevilliers.

Partly no doubt because he was more interested in the old masters than the other Impressionists and took a more traditional view of the painter’s role in society, Manet was slow to take up the idea of painting on the spot, in the open air.

But that summer it all changed quite dramatically when he spent some time painting with Monet and Renoir at Argenteuil, a small town just down-river from Paris. There it was Monet’s convictions which especially affected him, and although he never became particularly interested in landscape as such, took to painting people out of doors.

Here he has captured Monet and his wife Camille in the boat which the painter used as a floating studio, rowing it up and down the Seine and stopping whenever he spotted a promising subject. Monet was often desperately poor, but could always rely on a loan from Manet – who was equally unpopular but less dependent on art for his income.

Wikiart article

Thursday, September 19, 2019

Camille Monet and a Child

Camille Monet and a Child in the Artist’s Garden in Argenteuil
Claude Monet, 1875
via WikiPaintings

There is a lot of information about the painting at the link, but nothing about what I love most in this painting — the child's rapt concentration on the book. That is so lifelike, so what I know from being around little ones and I love the way Monet is able to evoke it.