Monet's sunflowers - love for flowers and impressionism

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

Most will easily recognize the author of the painting "Sunflowers", where the flowers are written in swirling lines against the blue sky. This is Van Gogh. And who is the author of the flowers in the vase? Claude Monet.

The artist was partial to flowers. This is evidenced by the garden in Geterny, created by his hands. Now it is there that the Claude Monet Museum is located, where visitors can admire not only art, but also living plants. By the way, the author considered his garden his best work. Even with brilliant paintings.

This is also told by many of the artist's works filled with flowers. True, flowers standing in a vase are not so common among his paintings. Most often, he preferred field and garden plants. In this case, they became part of the landscape, not the still life. He also depicted his loved ones, for example, his wife, surrounded by flowers. Monet even said that if not for the flowers, he would not have become an artist. It was they who inspired him to create.

True, still lifes with bouquets are also present in his work. Not inin such quantity, but still noticeable - there are chrysanthemums, mallows, and anemones there. But the artist's most famous still life is Monet's Sunflowers. Artwork on display at the Metropolitan Gallery.

Such different sunflowers

It can be said that Monet initiated a series of paintings dedicated to these sunny flowers. A bouquet of sunflowers by Claude Monet was created in 1881. And it was followed by a whole cycle of Van Gogh's sunflowers and a dying painting by Gauguin. Of course, the flowers of different artists differ in style and mood. Monet's and Van Gogh's sunflowers are cheerful, but Van Gogh's bright yellow background and broken flower lines already show something restless. Although the period of life in which he painted these flowers was filled with new hopes for the artist, both mental illness and disagreements with Paul Gauguin influenced him. By the way, Van Gogh has two whole series of sunflowers. They are noticeably different.

But Gauguin's sunflowers are by no means joyful and not sunny, although they are yellow. This color is already dirty and rusty, and the flowers themselves are drooping, with petals protruding randomly, separated from each other. They express the artist's fatigue from poverty and disease.

Impressionism is destiny

Who is Claude Monet, what can be said about his biography and work? Like many creative people, the father did not at all dream of seeing his son as an artist. He read him a career as a grocer. But the boy was not indifferent to painting from a very young age. He often drew cartoons.

Thenthe young man had a chance to meet with Eugene Boudin, who showed an interested student several techniques of impressionist painting. At 20, Claude was drafted into the army in Algeria, where he would have to serve 7 years. There would be no happiness, but misfortune helped! Having contracted typhus after 2 years of service, the young soldier was demobilized.

Returning to his homeland, Claude Monet followed his dream - he entered the university at the Faculty of Arts. But his studies disappointed him. The approach to painting turned out to be outdated and alien to the young artist. But Monet did not stop and found like-minded people. In the painting studio of Charles Gleyre, he met Renoir, Basil and Sisley. Together they became the founders of impressionism. By the way, this term is associated with the name of the artist, more precisely, with one of his paintings.

The birth of the word

The painting was called "Impression. Sunrise". One of the critics called the new direction in painting impressionism - from the French. impression - if you try to translate literally, you could call it "impression". In the mouth of the critic, this sounded dismissive - he considered these artists frivolous people who are alien to depth and fundamentality.

However, the Impressionists themselves liked the new word. It perfectly expressed the essence of their painting. In the end, what is more truth - in the heavy traces of centuries or in a light moment - this is another question. The Impressionists believed that nature is so changeable that it is important to capture its colors at the moment. And the human soul is just as changeable. Everything we see and feel passes through a prismour momentary mood. This gives the impression.

Big strokes

One of the signs of talent is being able to portray something simple so that it will take your breath away.

Very interesting technique of painting, which tells a lot about the style of the artist. Claude Monet abandoned the clarity familiar to many generations. The picture is written in large, blurry strokes. The whole picture seems to be alive and moving. The pink-blue background is saturated with air and space, the tablecloth is crumpled, the leaves are twisting. Not a single flower is repeated, each has its own "pose" - its own turn, the bend of the petals. Some flowers are only vaguely visible in the foliage, some resemble dandelions.

Color game

Besides, his work with color is also unusual. If you get closer, you can see that the color of the petals is made up of fairly contrasting colors. Shades of red, yellow, orange boldly fall on the canvas. But it is worth moving a little further and all this is neatly assembled into a single picture.

Thanks to all these techniques, Monet's sunflowers come out dynamic, despite the fact that still life is one of the most static genres.

Non-random error

There is another feature that attentive viewers and art critics notice: there is a slight disproportion in Monet's sunflowers. It is unlikely that such a bunch of flowers would fit in this narrow vase. But this is not a mistake, but rather an artistic negligence. If you don't look ata picture with a corrosive, pedantic look, you won’t notice this, because it looks harmonious. And the artist did not try to make each one believable. He concentrated on the main thing and thanks to this, the picture as a whole is lively and realistic. A small vase is depicted in order to give the entire space of the picture to sunflowers.