art
by Lilia CorrentiMONET THE PAINTING OF LIGHT
AND ITS ROLE IN PICTURE PAINTING
in the garden, he’d often travel through France and as far as Italy look-
ing for ideal landscapes and material to paint on canvass but always “en
plein air “.His passion for drawing began early when just a boy. “I used to
draw wreaths on the margins of the pages in some of my books and I
would usually decorate the blue covers of my exercise books with fan-
tastic ornaments or with irreverent cartoons and extreme caricatures
of my teachers”. Meeting Boudin proved to be a decisive turn around
in Monet’s training. Boudin passed on to him love for painting outdoors
in the open air : “ He studies, learns to see and draw, to paint and cre-
ate landscapes”. Boudin persevered in his teachings relentlessly. “My eyes
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what it is. I analysed nature’s shapes and I reproduced them with a pencil
and studied its colours and diverse hues attentively”. All of these aspects
played an important role in Monet’s evolution as a painter and father of
impressionists. Meetings with Alfred Sisley, Jean Frédéric Bazille, Gustave
Courbet and more especially with Pierre-Auguste Renoir who was at
that time just beginning as an artist wrote: “I spend much of my time with
Monet. We often don’t know where our next meal will be coming from.
However I’m happy all the same because as far as painting goes Monet
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photo studio situated in 35 Boulevard des Capucines on 15th April 1874,
where thirty artists including Monet, Dégas, Cézanne, Boudin, Pissarro,
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It was then that Monet and his peers adopted the term “Impressionists”.
With a touch of provocative irony they accepted the adjective thrown at
them by Louis Leroy which he had coined to be denigrating and which
paraphrased the title of one of Monet’s paintings Impressione, levar del
sole.” Ah, here, it’s here! What on earth does this canvass represent? Look
at the catalogue”. “Impressione, sole nascente”. “Impressive I am sure. Yeah
and some impression in that canvass. And what a liberty! and with such
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better than this! Leroy was not the only one; Albert Wolff commented:
“the only impression these impressionists convey is comparable to that
of a cat stepping along a piano’s keyboard, or that of a monkey with a
boxful of coloured crayons in its hands”.In the group supporting though,
Jules-Antoine Castagnary, while accepting the neologism referred to im-Sixty works by Monet (1840-
1926) coming from the Mar-
mottan Monet Museum are
currently exhibited at the
Complesso del Vittoriano in
Rome up until January 28th- The curator of the ex-
hibition Marianne Mathieu
ranges from the artist’s renowned caricatures representing some of his
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dedicated to Water lilies and Wisteria in his Giverny garden where he
spent most of his last decades. The exhibit comprises works performed
during his frequent trips to London, Paris, Le Havre, Vétheuil, Pourville and
several portraits of his children. “ A unique exhibition, since the works
exhibited are not ‘only’ paintings by Claude Monet, but are those he was
personally very fond of, those he kept all his life in what was his last
property in Giverny – tells Marianne Mathieu – this is more of a voy-
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moved into the house in Giverny in 1883 there was nothing else but an
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Monet many years to transform it. While work remained in progress