Born out of the artists’ desire to break

Born out of the artists’ desire to break away from the canons of the Academy, French Impressionist artists Manet, Monet, and Renoir explored contemporary subjects and scenes in new and experimental ways. Major contributions of the Impressionists include painting everyday life, they choice to paint en plein air, outdoors, instead of in the studio and most importantly, the fleeting effects of light on a particular subject. These “impressions” of light became the primary subject matter, especially for Monet. On the bridge between Realism and Impressionism is Edouard Manet. Born in Paris in 1832, he preferred a more classical approach to painting. However, his subject matter in paintings such as Le Dejeuner Sur L’herbe and Olympia gave him the reputation as a nonconformist. Manet places the Olympia we see in classical paintings in a contemporary setting rather than an allegorical one and she looks directly at the viewer. The refusal of the salon to show these paintings earned him the dubious title, “Father of Impressionism”. Claude Monet is best known for his paintings of his garden at Giverny. In the 1890’s he began to build a water garden around his house. There he painted his famous water lily paintings. By 1909 he had conceptualized an idea for a vast project of water lily canvases that would envelop an entire room. From 1916 almost until his death he worked on these canvases. He spoke of this endeavor, “In the night I am constantly haunted by what I am trying to realize. I rise broken with fatigue every morning.” In these canvases perspective is reduced to the water lilies floating on the surface of the water. Pierre Auguste Renoir’s painting, Le Moulin de la Galette is a study in impressionism. The scene is of working class people enjoying the leisure of a Sunday afternoon. The artist set up an easel right near the location and painted from life. Renoir was especially concerned with the play of light and shadow as they danced across the surface of an object. The fondness for impressionism exists today because these images capture forever the changing moments of time that we can all relate to in our contemporary world.
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“The passing cloud, the cooling breeze, the sudden storm that threatens to burst and finally does, the wind that stirs and suddenly blows with full force, the light that fades and is reborn are all things, elusive to the eyes of the uninitiated, that transfigure the color and shape of the bodies of water.” (Claude Monet) The Musee de l’Orangerie sits in the jardins de Tuileries, not far from the Musee du Louvre in Paris. It contains over 140 works by French painters, produced between 1880 and 1930. A specially designed space was created in the Orangerie to house the 12 piece series The Water Lilies, painted by Claude Monet between 1918 and 1926, and gifted to France by Monet following the signing of the armistice. Monet’s own garden and ponds at Giverny provide the setting painted in these works.
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Monet was born on November 14, 1840, in Paris, but he spent most of his childhood in Le Havre. There, in his teens, he showed a talent for drawing caricatures, and in about 1858 he met the landscape painter Eug?ne Boudin, who encouraged him to paint out of doors rather than in the studio. In 1859, Monet committed himself to a career as an artist, and moved to Paris.

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