Monet & Light Effects
Claude Oscar Monet spent nearly 60 years exploring the effect of light on landscape and trying to capture those effects with paint and canvas. Monet wrote: "For me, a landscape does not exist in its own right, since its appearance changes at every moment; but the surrounding atmosphere brings it to life---the light and the air which vary continually."
Discovery
At about age 15, Monet began to take lessons in pastel and oil painting from artist Eugene Boudin. Boudin primarily painted outdoors and encouraged young Monet to also paint outside in natural light. Monet was reluctant at first but likened the experience to a veil being torn away from his eyes. He spent rest of his life painting the outdoor world in the light of different times of day and different seasons.
Light and Water
Monet fled from the Franco-Prussian war by traveling to London in 1870. He had spent two years doing military service in Algeria in the early 1860s and had no desire to get caught up in the conflict. His painting of a red sun rising through the fog over the Thames was titled "Impression: Sunrise" and gave its name to an entire artistic movement.
Returning from England via Holland, where picturesque windmills and canals intersected field and sky, provided more inspiration for capturing the quality of light, color and reflections in the water.
Rural France
In 1871, Monet and his wife Camille settled in Argenteuil on the River Seine, outside of Paris. Monet set up an easel on a flat boat and painted scenes up and down the Seine, capturing the reflections and refraction of air, light and water on the countryside in all seasons. Later, when the Monets moved to Giverny, his water lily pond, with its weeping willows and Japanese bridge, gave him a constant framework to explore the effect of the changing weather and atmospheric effects on the light and color of the landscape.
Series Paintings
In the 1890s, Monet painted groups of huge canvases, some as large as 6 by 14 feet. He painted the same subject from the same angle at different times of day to discover how the changes in the quality of the light would change the shapes, mood and images of the chosen subject. In his journals, Monet recorded his method for working on the haystacks: he took multiple canvases to the field and worked for no longer than ten or fifteen minutes on each painting. As the angle of the sun changed, the colors and shadows changed, and Monet sought to paint exactly what he saw.
Final Work
Monet's final and most monumental work is displayed at Musée de l'Orangerie in Paris. The 22 panneaux were painted in a studio with huge north windows to give the best light, and Monet sought to portray the movement of light through the day. It took Monet almost ten years to complete the paintings and he did not live to see them installed. Monet died in December of 1926. In 1927, the panels were mounted, unvarnished as he wished, in the two elliptical rooms: the artist's gift to France.
