Research Paper On Claude Monet

The school of Impressionism, which continues to attract adherents among artists, coalesced around a number of French artists who took light, open air and interpretive color as their guide. This school was itself an outgrowth of Realism as practiced by painters like Courbet and Corot, who sought to depict everyday settings and people in their art in opposition to existing conventions that dictated an idealization of the world within narrowly defined subjects for painting. Undoubtedly the best known in this exhibit, the works of the French painter Claude Monet, have been popularized to a near saturation point the world over in recent years. Framed here by his predecessor Turner and his contemporary Whistler, this show allows for a welcome contrast and context for his sometimes overly decorative paintings. Despite some recognizable parallels of style, Monet was probably not familiar with
There is an honest innocence in much of Monet’s work that is often both its strength and its weakness. Monet very deliberately sought subjects that were amorphous by nature, such as the cityscapes shrouded in London smog, and while this lends his painting a dreamy quality that has an irresistible appeal, one feels at times that he has excluded less obvious subjects in which to find beauty. A good deal has been made by the organizers of this exhibit of the role of industrial pollution and smog on the Impressionist style of painting by figures such as Monet and Whistler, Although there is clearly some foundation for this thesis—particularly in light of the toxic conditions produced in London of that period—it seems to trivialize somewhat the deeper influences in their