Code: MON011
"The
Regatta at Argenteuil (Régate à Argenteuil)
" (c. 1872)
Author: Monet, Claude (1840-1926)
Musee d'Orsay, Paris
Monet, Claude
(1840-1926). French Impressionist
painter.
Monet is one
of the world's best-loved artists. Heis regarded as the archetypal
Impressionist.
The group was named after one of his pictures---
Impression: Sunrise (Musée Marmottan, Paris; 1872; Monet
Collection Set I, Code MON010).
Monet's
devotion to painting out of doors is illustrated by the famous story
concerning one of his most ambitious early works, Women
in the Garden (Musée d'Orsay, Paris; 1866; Set IV, Code
MON062). The picture is about 2.5 meters high and to enable him to paint
all of it outside he had a trench dug in the garden so that the canvas
could be raised or lowered by pulleys to the height he required.
And he would not paint even the leaves in the background unless the
lighting conditions were exactly right.
From
1890 he concentrated on series of pictures in which he painted the same
subject at different times of the day in different lights--- Wheatstack
(1890-91; Set II, Code MON025) and Rouen Cathedral (1891-95; Set II, Code MON028) are the best known.
He
continued to travel widely, visiting London and Venice several times (and
also Norway as a guest of Queen Christiana), but increasingly his
attention was focused on the celebrated water-garden he created at Giverny,
which served as the theme for the series of paintings on Water-lilies that began in 1899 and grew to dominate his work completely.
In
his final years he was troubled by failing eyesight, but he painted until
the end. He was enormously prolific and many major galleries have examples
of his work. The spontaneity and vivacity of his painting technique and his devotion to
the close observation of nature; the fantastic effects of light and color
were captured in his paintings so wonderfully.
It
is a great pleasure to let Monet’s masterpieces bring Nature into our
hearts.
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