#Modern Monet

[robster2016]

Arcadian Echoes

Dr. Caelum Vespera, Curator of Interstellar Artifacts at the National Museum of Future Heritage in the Republic of Solaris, discusses the impressionist painting of Rob Medley, entitled ‘Arcadian Echoes,’ painted at the Ashville Ohio Viking Festival in the first half of the 21st Century. Arcadian Echoes This splendid composition is a remarkable tribute to the Impressionist movement, echoing the…

[the-cricket-chirps]

Claude Monet, The Studio Boat, 1874

(Monet’s floating “studio” in Argenteuil)

[noctilucentis]

from the series “Mornings on the Seine”, by Claude Monet

[artsandculture]

The Water-Lily Pond (1899) 🎨 Claude Monet 🏛️ The National Gallery 📍 London, United Kingdom

For Monet, gardens offered a refuge from the modern urban and industrial world, although he and his fellow garden enthusiasts benefited from modern advances in botanical science that were creating new hybrid flowers in a wide choice of shapes and colours that could be produced on an almost industrial scale. He made modest gardens in the homes he rented in Argenteuil and Vetheuil in the 1870s, but from 1883, when he moved to a rented house in Giverny, about 50 miles to the west of Paris, he had more scope to indulge his passion for plants. He became a dedicated gardener with an extensive botanical knowledge, and sought the opinions of leading horticulturalists. As Monet’s career flourished his increasing wealth enabled him to fund what became a grand horticultural enterprise: by the 1890s he was employing as many as eight gardeners.

Monet began by refashioning the garden in front of the house, the so-called ‘Clos Normand’, replacing the existing kitchen garden and orchard with densely planted colourful flower beds that were filled with blooms throughout the seasons. He was able to buy the house in 1890, and three years later he purchased an adjacent plot of land next to the river Epte beyond the railway line at the edge of his property. The plot had a small pond with arrowhead and wild water lilies, which he wanted to turn into a water garden with a larger lily pond ‘both for the pleasure of the eye and for the purpose of having subjects to paint’.

The idea may have occurred to him after he had seen the water garden at the 1899 Exposition Universelle in Paris created by the grower Joseph Bory Latour-Marliac, who bred the first colourful hardy waterlilies. Monet began by requesting permission from the Prefect of the Eure to dig irrigation channels from the Ru – a branch of the Epte – to feed his pond, but the Giverny villagers objected, fearing it would contaminate the water and that the foreign plants would poison their cattle. Monet was furious, but three months later permission came through and he began to enlarge the existing pond, replacing the wild water lilies with Latour-Marliac hybrids available in yellows, pinks, whites and violets.

The pond was enlarged on further occasions – in 1901 and 1904 – tripling the size of the water garden. Together with the flower garden on the other side of the railway track it became the principal preoccupation of the last 26 years of Monet’s life. While the Clos Normand garden was laid out along fairly traditional lines, harking back to the formal French gardens of seventeenth-century Europe, with a central alleyway and geometrically arranged beds, the water garden was more Eastern in inspiration. Its less regimented, more natural design and more muted colours created a quieter, meditative atmosphere. Monet erected a Japanese bridge over the western end of the pond that took its inspiration from the bridges in ukiyo-e Japanese prints. He was a keen collector of these prints and he owned a copy of Hiroshige’s Wisteria at Kameido Tenjin Shrine (1856), one of the many prints that features a curved bridge. In a more general sense, the water garden reflected Monet’s admiration for the Japanese appreciation of nature.

Monet had to wait for his water garden to mature before he could begin to paint it in earnest. As he later recalled: ‘It took me some time to understand my water-lilies. It takes more than a day to get under your skin. And then all at once, I had the revelation – how wonderful my pond was – and reached for my palette. I’ve hardly had any other subject since that moment.’ In total, Monet painted 250 canvases of his water garden. Around 200 of these represent water lilies floating on the surface of the water, while the remainder also show the Japanese bridge, the weeping willow trees and wisteria and the irises, agapanthus and day lilies on its banks. In all these pictures Monet was painting a subject that was already ‘pictorial’ – a landscape that had been carefully composed according to his personal aesthetic. The National Gallery has three further paintings of the water garden :Water-lilies, setting sun; Irises; and Water-lilies.

Monet painted three views of the Japanese bridge in 1895, not long after it had been constructed, but then took a break from the subject, only returning to it in 1899. By now the pool was overhung by vegetation and surrounded by plants, but to judge from contemporary photographs it was never as enclosed as Monet painted it, and he exaggerated the feeling of claustrophobia. In December 1900 he exhibited 12 paintings at Durand-Ruel’s gallery in Paris, all of which showed more or less symmetrical views of the Japanese bridge.

In this painting, as in the others in the series, we are looking down onto the surface of the water, where the lily pads float into the distance, meeting the dense foliage on the far bank. Weeping willows are reflected in the pond and clumps of iris border its banks. The perspective seems to shift so that it is hard to find a single focal point; it is as though we are looking up at the bridge but down on the waterlilies. The picture, like the water itself, seems to oscillate between surface and depth. The mainly vertical reflections provide a counterpoint to the horizontal clumps of the lily pads. Different colours, applied with thick brushstrokes, are placed next to each other. This way of painting has more in common with Monet’s early Impressionist works than his more recent paintings of mornings on the Seine, where he had used softer, more blended strokes to convey hazy atmospheric effects.

The Japanese bridge series marked a turning point in Monet’s art. From now on his subjects were painted from an increasingly confined viewpoint, conveying the sense of an enclosed world. In later paintings of the pond, he would dispense with the banks and bridge altogether to focus solely on the water, the reflections and the water lilies. The culmination of Monet’s water lily paintings were the Grandes Dėcorations, 22 enormous canvases each over two metres high and totalling more than 90 metres in length, which he completed months before his death and donated to the French state. These are now on permanent display in two oval rooms in the Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris.

[disease]

“SPRING FLOWERS” CLAUDE MONET // 1864 [oil on fabric | 56 7/8 x 46 1/8”]

[abp-photo]

MOMA

september 2021

[skf-fineart]

Claude Monet (1840-1926)

Weeping Willow, 1921-1922

Oil on canvas

[hornyforpoetry]

🏳️‍🌈 HAPPY PRIDE MONTH, MY LGBTQ+ ACADEMICS!!🏳️‍🌈

- in the honour of Pride Month 2024

Painters in order: Toulouse Lautrec // Edvard Munch // Gustave Klimt // Paul Cézanne // Vincent van Gogh // Claude Monet

[academic-vampire]

This artist’s work is incredible. Every time I see him on my feed, I can’t help but stare in awe. He reminds me so much of Monet and Van Gogh. So vibrant and breathtaking. I highly recommend looking at more of his stuff on instagram:

INSTA: @ landscapesergiy

(NOT MY WORK, artist listed above)

[srlgemstone]

A futuristic view of Monet's painting.

Agate Pair

[yakobssonarthouse]

Woman with a Parasol by Claude Monet (1875), National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.

This iconic painting presents a moment both fleeting and timeless, where the figure of the mother hovers above the child, bathed in soft light, yet simultaneously elusive. The image evokes profound emotional and symbolic tensions, rooted in psychoanalytic concepts of separation, authority, and maternal distance. The green umbrella shields her from the sky—a potentially symbolic paternal or authoritarian presence—while the child, exposed to the elements below, looks up in awe, perhaps overwhelmed by both the nurturing and distant forces of the maternal figure.

Core Emotional and Symbolic Insights:

Separation Anxiety and Maternal Longing: The child’s position beneath the mother suggests a yearning for closeness, but also the beginning of independence. In psychoanalytic terms, this image speaks to the fear of separation and the desire for maternal protection. The maternal object is not necessarily emotionally distant but appears unreachable, symbolizing the child's unconscious anxiety of individuation—the process of emotional separation from the mother to develop a unique identity. The viewer, who may resonate with this painting, might feel a deep emotional tug toward this early tension: wanting the safety and nurturing of the mother while confronting the realities of separation and growing autonomy.

The Sky and the Paternal Authority: The sky in the painting can be seen as a looming authoritarian presence, representing paternal authority or societal expectations. This external force could be the Oedipal father, whose presence is both protective and restrictive. The child, exposed to the elements, feels the full weight of this authoritarian system—the sun symbolizing both the father’s expectations and the blessings of inherited talents. This creates a push-pull dynamic, where the child is forced to grapple with the overwhelming weight of paternal authority, longing for maternal protection (represented by the umbrella) that feels distant.

Emotional Development and Maternal Presence: While the mother does not appear emotionally absent, her position above the child suggests a kind of emotional distance or separation, which may evoke feelings of yearning or fantasy. The child gazes upward in admiration and awe but remains somewhat disconnected from the protective force of the umbrella. This underscores the emotional tension of growing up—seeking safety and closeness from the maternal figure while slowly navigating the complexities of emotional independence. The viewer drawn to this painting may resonate with these themes, perhaps struggling with feelings of vulnerability in the face of authority and social expectations.

A Nuanced Mother-Child Dynamic: The painting captures the fantasy of maternal distance, where the mother may be fully present emotionally, but the child perceives a separation. This reflects the viewer’s potential experience of struggling with closeness and autonomy. The child’s connection to the grass—the id or raw instinct—contrasts with the mother's ethereal presence, caught between the sky (representing super-ego or authority) and the nurturing earth. This viewer may harbor deep fantasies of maternal care, while feeling uncertain or anxious about stepping into emotional independence.

Projection of the Viewer’s Own Parental Relationships: Viewers may unconsciously project their own unresolved feelings with their parents—specifically around paternal authority and maternal protection—onto the painting. The sense of inadequacy experienced by the viewer stems from the perceived dominance of the paternal figure (the sky, sun) and the struggle to achieve independence or self-assertion. Art provides a unique medium for exploring these unconscious conflicts, where the mother-child dynamic represents a larger struggle with societal expectations and emotional vulnerability.

Emotional Journey and Relationships:

Unattainable Maternal Closeness: The maternal figure in this painting, while seemingly nurturing, is also symbolic of an idealized form of care—something the viewer may feel they can never fully attain. The umbrella, while protecting her, creates a barrier between her and the child, symbolizing the unconscious fantasy of the mother as distant or untouchable. The viewer, resonating with this, may long for a sense of emotional security but also feel frustrated by the perception that they can never fully receive it.

Paternal Approval and Societal Pressure: The paternal authority present in the sky or the authoritarian system pushes the viewer into a space of self-reflection. They may feel inadequate, struggling to measure up to societal or paternal expectations, which leaves them feeling exposed or vulnerable. The child’s exposure to the elements symbolizes their inner tension between being overwhelmed by societal forces while trying to assert their individuality.

Nurturing and Independence in Relationships: For the viewer, this image may speak to a feeling of emotional distance in relationships. They may long for nurturing connection but feel as though the protective maternal object is always slightly out of reach, creating an ongoing tension between closeness and the fear of losing themselves in the process. This may mirror their emotional struggles in romantic relationships, where they oscillate between seeking security and feeling dominated by external expectations or the demands of independence.

Projection of Societal and Parental Dynamics: This viewer may find themselves frequently engaging in power dynamics with authority figures or within their own personal relationships. The sky's symbolism of authoritarian systems or the paternal figure may manifest in the viewer's behavior as a need to navigate societal pressures or expectations imposed by parents, particularly the father. The fantasy of paternal approval remains dominant, with the viewer subconsciously working to balance their own desires for self-assertion with the need for external validation.

[sualne]

monet and law in the modern au

[the-cricket-chirps]

Edouard Manet, Monet in his Studio Boat, 1874

Claude Monet, The Studio Boat, 1874

[iloveskies]

the national gallery, london

[tilbageidanmark]

[ancient-hoe]

Paintings by Claude Monet