Art Talk: Artist highlight

This year for Art Talk I have been doing a self made tour in the National Gallery of Art in DC. October is Art Talk: NGA Highlights tour. Then I highlight one of the artist in the tour.

Can you tell who painted this?

What about now?

Now?

The Japanese Footbridge, 1899
MET, New York City

I would guess there are many more people that would recognize this last painting as a Monet because they recognize the iconic bridge and waterlilies.

I am especially interested in the close up of impressionist paintings and seeing the colors and brushstrokes and then looking at the picture as a whole!

Below is another painting of the same picture of the Japanese bridge at the National Gallery of Art in DC.

According to the NGA website:

In 1899, Monet painted 12 works from a single vantage point, focusing on the arching blue–green bridge and the microcosm of his water garden. 1

The NGA also informs us that Monet created more than 250 works focused on waterlilies. 2

Monet and many of the artist of the time were very interested in Japan and Japanese art as the borders had recently (1854) been opened to the west.3

The Japanese Footbridge, 1899
National Gallery of Art, DC

Claude Monet, born in Paris in 1840. He grew up in Normandy and at the age of 22 (1862) he went back to Paris to study painting and there befriended fellow students Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley, and Frédéric Bazille, who would later form the core group of the original impressionists. 4

He was a key figure in the Impressionist movement that transformed French painting in the second half of the nineteenth century. Throughout his long career, Monet consistently depicted the landscape and leisure activities. 5 And Giverny was one of his most prolific subjects.

Here is a video of him in 1915 at the age of 75 painting at Giverny. It is worth the 2 minutes to see watch this 105 year old video of Monet at work...and in his white suit no less.