Claude Monet | Le ninfee

Nel 1890 che Monet acquista la sua casa a Giverny ed un anno dopo realizza il suo bellissimo giardino fiorito, il Clos Normand, una vera e propria opera d’arte.

Marcel Proust (1871-1922) descriveva cosi il giardino di Monet nel suo "Alla ricerca del tempo perduto":

« [...] giacché il colore che creava in sottofondo ai fiori era più prezioso, più commovente di quello stesso dei fiori; e sia che facesse scintillare sotto le ninfee, nel pomeriggio, il caleidoscopio di una felicità attenta, mobile e silenziosa, sia che si colmasse verso sera, come certi porti lontani, del rosa sognante del tramonto, cambiando di continuo per rimanere sempre in accordo, intorno alle corolle dalle tinte più stabili, con quel che c'è di più profondo, di più fuggevole, di più misterioso - con quel che c'è d'infinito - nell'ora, sembrava che li avesse fatti fiorire in pieno cielo».

Claude Monet | Valley of the Petite Creuse, 1889

The striking effects of Monet’s several paintings of the Creuse Valley in central France are achieved through complex, superimposed layers of color, as he combined bold brushstrokes with intricate passages made up of many small touches.

Title: Valley of the Petite Creuse

Author: Claude Monet (French painter, 1840-1926)

Date: 1889

Medium: Oil on canvas

Dimensions: 65.4 x 81.3 cm (25 3/4 x 32 in.)

Current location: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Claude Monet | The Manneporte (Etretat), 1883

Monet spent most of February 1883 at Étretat, a fishing village and resort on the Normandy coast.

He painted twenty views of the beach and the three extraordinary rock formations in the area: the Porte d'Aval, the Porte d'Amont, and the Manneporte.

The sunlight that strikes the Manneporte has a dematerializing effect that permitted the artist to interpret the cliff almost exclusively in terms of color and luminosity.

Claude Monet | The Manneporte (Etretat), 1883 | Metropolitan Museum of Art

Claude Monet | Boating on the River Epte, 1890

Boating on the River Epte (also known as The Canoe on the Epte) is an 1890 oil painting by French impressionist artist Claude Monet.

It is currently housed at the São Paulo Museum of Art.

Between 1887 and 1890 Monet concerned himself with portraying scenes from the River Epte, which skirted his property at Giverny.

The sisters Suzanne and Blanche Hoschedé posed for this series of pictures, their late father being banker Ernest Hoschedé, a patron of the arts and collector of Monet, and their mother, Alice, who became Monet's second wife.

Claude Monet | Boating on the River Epte, 1890 | São Paulo Museum of Art

Claude Monet | Camille Monet à la fenêtre, 1873

In 1871, Monet took up residence in the Maison Aubry on rue Pierre Guienne in Argenteuil.

It was situated down the street from the train station, making it possible for the artist to commute to his Paris studio and return home in the evening.

Although Maison Aubry served as a frequent meeting place for Impressionist painters as well as collectors, writers, and journalists, this painting provides a rare glimpse into the interior of the Monets’ home.

Claude Monet | Camille Monet à la fenêtre, 1873 | Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond

Claude Monet | The Stroller (Suzanne Hoschede), 1887

This painting of Suzanne Hoschedé in the meadows just south of Le Pressoir, Monet's home at Giverny, was probably made in the summer of 1887.

She became Monet's preferred model in the period after the death of his first wife, Camille, in 1879, and before 1890, when he gave up plein-air figure painting.

The model was the daughter of Alice Hoschedé, whom Monet married in 1892. | Source: © Metropolitan Museum of Art

Claude Monet | The Japanese Bridge, 1900

In 1883, Claude Monet moved to Giverny, about forty miles northwest of Paris.

For the rest of his life, he devoted himself to painting and tending his gardens, which included the Japanese footbridge in this picture.

His style became more expressive as he piled thick pigments layer upon layer in ever more intense colors that often didn’t correspond to reality (possibly because his eyesight was failing).

Giving up any desire to record minute details, he wove tangled skeins of paint with bold strokes, seeming more concerned with nature’s mysteries than with mere appearance.

Claude Monet | The Artist's Garden at Giverny, 1900

The Artist's Garden at Giverny (French: Le Jardin de l'artiste à Giverny) is an oil on canvas painting by Claude Monet done in 1900, now in the Musée d'Orsay, Paris.

It is one of many works by the artist of his garden at Giverny over the last thirty years of his life.

The painting shows rows of irises in various shades of purple and pink set diagonally across the picture plane.

Monet: "Il colore è la mia ossessione.."

"Questi paesaggi d'acqua e di riflessi sono diventati un'ossessione. E' al di là delle mie forze di persona anziana… non dormo più per colpa loro… Mi alzo la mattina rotto di fatica… dipingere è così difficile e torturante. Ce n'è abbastanza da far perdere la speranza. Ciò nonostante non vorrei morire prima di aver detto quello che avevo da dire; o almeno aver tentato di dirlo. I miei giorni sono contati… Domani forse"… - Claude Monet, lettera dell'11 agosto 1908 al suo amico Gustave Geffroy

Claude Monet in Italy

Claude Monet | Palm Trees at Bordighera, 1884 | Metropolitan Museum of Art

Monet first visited Italy’s southern coast with Renoir in December 1883.

Shortly thereafter, he returned alone to paint, writing his dealer that working "à deux" was constraining.

This scene and The Valley of the Nervia reflect Monet’s excitement at the new motifs offered by the region’s palm trees and mountains.

For this view, he ventured from his hotel in Bordighera and looked across the Bay of Ventimiglia toward the Alps on the French border.

The dazzling colors challenged him to "dare to use all the tones of pink and blue", although what he truly needed was a "palette of diamonds and jewels".

Claude Monet | Palm Trees at Bordighera, 1884 | Metropolitan Museum of Art

Claude Monet | Color Quotes

"The point is to know how to use the colors, the choice of which is, when all’s said and done, a matter of habit".

"Color is my day-long obsession, joy and torment".

"Il colore è la mia ossessione, gioia e tormento per tutto il giorno".

"I haven’t yet managed to capture the color of this landscape; there are moments when I’m appalled at the colors I’m having to use, I’m afraid what I’m doing is just dreadful and yet I really am understating it; the light is simply terrifying".

Claude Monet | Frost, 1875

Standing side by side, Claude Monet and Pierre-Auguste Renoir painted the same view of this garden in winter.

Both used finely nuanced shades of brown and blue, although Monet added an element of warmth to his view by means of yellowish light and a touch of red.

He executed the branches with strong brushstrokes, while Renoir’s depiction of the bushes is more filigree (Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris).

More than any other Impressionist, Claude Monet was fascinated by colored reflections on surfaces covered in snow, frost, ice, or hoarfrost.

Claude Monet | Lo stile

Claude Monet è stato il sostenitore più convinto ed instancabile del «metodo impressionista» che vide già riassunto nelle opere dell'amico Manet. Per comprendere appieno la carica rivoluzionaria della figura di Monet, tuttavia, è necessario calarla con precisione nell'ambiente storico ed artistico francese della seconda metà dell'Ottocento.

La Francia della seconda metà del XIX secolo era una nazione viva, moderna, ricca di magnificenze e di contraddizioni, che in seguito all'offensiva prussiana del 1870 aveva conosciuto un impetuoso sviluppo economico e sociale che, tuttavia, aveva inizialmente mancato di investire le arti figurative.

Claude Monet | Snow Scene at Argenteuil, 1875

Snow at Argenteuil / Rue sous la neige, Argenteuil - is an oil-on-canvas landscape painting from the Impressionist artist Claude Monet.

It is the largest of no fewer than eighteen works Monet painted of his home commune of Argenteuil while it was under a blanket of snow during the winter of 1874-1875.

This painting - number 352 in Wildenstein's catalogue of the works of Monet - is the largest of the eighteen.

The attention to detail evident in the smaller paintings is less evident in this larger picture. Instead, Monet has rendered large areas of the canvas in closely like tones and colours of blue and grey.

Claude Monet | Summer, 1874

In April and May of 1874, for the first time Monet and his artist friends exhibited their own works rejected by the official "Salon" in rooms belonging to the photographer Nadar on the boulevard des Capucines.

A newspaper critic, referring to Monet’s Impression - Sunrise of 1872 mockingly coined the term "Impressionists".

Claude Monet | A bouquet of gladioli, lilies and daisies, 1878

Painted in 1878, Monet’s "Bouquet of gladioli, lilies and daisies" / "Bouquet de glaïeuls, lis et marguerites" - beautifully demonstrates the artist’s ability to evoke the lavishness and vitality of flowers, rendering them with extraordinary freshness and spontaneity.

Claude Monet | La terrasse à Sainte-Adresse, 1867

"The Garden at Sainte-Adresse" is a painting by the French impressionist painter Claude Monet.

The painting was acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art after an auction sale at Christie's in December 1967, under the French title "La terrasse à Sainte-Adresse".

The painting was exhibited at the 4th Impressionist exhibition, Paris, April 10-May 11, 1879, as no. 157 under the title Jardin à Sainte-Adresse.

Claude Monet | Seine painting

During the 19th and the 20th centuries the Seine inspired many artists.

The Seine is a 777-kilometre-long river and an important commercial waterway within the Paris Basin in the north of France.

It rises at Source-Seine, 30 kilometres northwest of Dijon in northeastern France in the Langres plateau, flowing through Paris and into the English Channel at Le Havre (and Honfleur on the left bank).

Claude Monet | Spring (Fruit Trees in Bloom) 1873

Claude Monet made this work in the vicinity of his home in Argenteuil, a village on the Seine northwest of Paris that was a favorite gathering place of the Impressionists.

Although the scene has previously been called Plum Blossoms and Apples Trees in Bloom, the type of tree cannot be determined from the flurry of white buds evoked by the artist.

Claude Monet | Argenteuil, Late Afternoon, 1872

From: Museum Barberini, Potsdam

Between 1871-1878 Claude Monet lived in Argenteuil – an idyllic suburb on the Seine that was noticeably transformed by industrialization in the vicinity of the capital. The promenade directs the viewer’s gaze into the distance, where a traditional villa in the style of the seventeenth century is flanked by towering factory chimneys.

In the light of the late afternoon, the sky and river glow in nuances of delicate pink and yellow.

Other painters such as Gustave Caillebotte, Édouard Manet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Alfred Sisley were also fascinated by this location, and over the course of the 1870s it became a center for the growing Impressionist movement, whose members rejected the Salon aesthetic and the conventions of academic painting with increasing self-confidence.

Stylistically, the years in Argenteuil were a turning point in Monet’s career: the matte, earthy tones of his early work gave way to the dynamic brushwork and more intense color of his mature Impressionist idion.