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Course: Europe 1800 - 1900 > Unit 5
Lesson 3: Impressionism- A beginner's guide to Impressionism
- What does “Impressionism” mean?
- How the Impressionists got their name
- Impressionist color
- Impressionist pictorial space
- Japonisme
- Degas, The Bellelli Family
- Degas, At the Races in the Countryside
- Degas, The Dance Class
- Degas, Visit to a Museum
- Caillebotte, The Floor Scrapers
- Gustave Caillebotte, Paris Street; Rainy Day
- Caillebotte, Man at his Bath
- Morisot, The Cradle
- A summer day in Paris: Morisot's Hunting Butterflies
- Cassatt, In the Loge
- Cassatt, Little Girl in a Blue Armchair
- Cassatt, Woman with a Pearl Necklace in a Loge
- Cassatt, The Loge
- Cassatt, The Child's Bath
- Mary Cassatt, The Coiffure
- Cassatt, Breakfast in Bed
- How to recognize Monet: The Basin at Argenteuil
- Claude Monet, Impression, Sunrise
- Monet, The Argenteuil Bridge
- Painting modern life: Monet's Gare Saint-Lazare
- Monet, The Gare Saint-Lazare
- Monet, Cliff Walk at Pourville
- Monet's Wheatstacks (Snow Effect, Morning): Getty conversations
- Monet, Poplars
- Monet, Rouen Cathedral Series
- Monet, Water Lilies
- How to Recognize Renoir: The Swing
- Renoir, La Loge
- Renoir, The Grands Boulevards
- Renoir, Moulin de la Galette
- Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Portrait of Madame Charpentier and Her Children
- Renoir, Luncheon of the Boating Party
- Renoir, The Large Bathers
- Impressionism
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Monet, Cliff Walk at Pourville
Claude Monet, Cliff Walk at Pourville, 1882, oil on canvas, 26-1/8 x 32-7/16 inches / 66.5 x 82.3 cm (Art Institute of Chicago). Created by Beth Harris and Steven Zucker.
Want to join the conversation?
- Where is this painting being displayed right now?(3 votes)
- This painting normally displayed in the Art Institute of Chicago: http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/artwork/14620(7 votes)
- Monet's bright, sunny paintings always bring me this sense of peace and comfort. Looking at the way his brush strokes and colours mesh together -- airy and pleasant and almost detached from reality -- I always feel a smile coming on. Monet is the kind of artist whose work I genuinely enjoy looking at. Does anyone else get this sense of peace or happiness from looking at Monet's particular style?(5 votes)
- What are some advantages and disavantages of working with oil paint? Are there any techniques that would help one to get comfortable with the medium and use it to its best advantage?(2 votes)
- I just had my first experience with oil this past semester and it was frustrating at first, but over the course of the semester, I grew to love it. I can't imagine using anything else. If you are a slow painter, as I am, the extra working time and ability to work in multiple transparent layers cannot be underestimated in the overall success of the painting. That being said, other mediums certainly have their place for certain styles and subjects. I was going for photo realism and it was a slow and painstaking process which made oil the perfect choice.(3 votes)
- At3:05, are you saying that Monet wanted those white vertical streaks on the painting? If so, why?(1 vote)
- Yes. Though I would call that pale green rather than white. Monet was very aware of the way that color applied on lower, earlier layer could be left exposed to interact with paint layers added later.(1 vote)
- none of the monet videos would play(0 votes)
Video transcript
(piano music playing) Beth: I put myself in the
position of these figures on this cliff and I almost feel that wind whipping around me and my instability on this cliff as a result. Steven: I can hear the cloth
on my shirt just whipping. I think we're ready for
the sound effects now. (wind blowing) Not a good idea. Monet doesn't need it. We have this brilliant summer day, we're on a cliff walk in a seaside resort in northwestern France
on the English Channel, we see these two women
... This is just a lovely image of people walking
on a path in nature. Beth: Well, I think the fact
that we immediately say, "I know what this moment is like" is indicative of the
fact that Monet is doing something that we still do today. We go on vacation at the seaside. It's lovely to go for a
walk along the clifftops and feel the wind and look out to the sea. Steven: We're still part
of the modern world, that he lived in and so there
is a real sense of immediacy and that comes across
in the brush strokes. So it's his hand moving across the canvas, but it's also the wind
whipping through the grasses at the top of this cliff. Beth: And yet all of
that is also rounded by these two vertical features
that we see of the rocks that mimic the verticality of the figures. Steven: And look how he's
used those cliff faces to create a sense of the
brilliance of the day. They are in deep shadow. The contrast is so sharp,
it reminds us of when there's sort of a glare from the sun. But even though the
painting seems completely spontaneous, in fact, it
was carefully crafted, we know from Monet's letters that when he painted these images, and he painted about a hundred of them ... Beth: Of these scenes
of the Normandy coast in the early 1880s. Steven: He would go back
and go back and go back to them ... ten ... fifteen,
sometimes even twenty times. Beth: And so there really
are layers of paint and when you get up close,
you can see those layers. There is this conflict
between that the spontaneity, the momentariness of this
scene and the way that he really worked to achieve that effect. Steven: Let's step up. Let's
look really closely at this. So sometimes you see areas where
the paint is still very fresh. Remember, this is oil.
It doesn't dry quickly and you can see how
he's painting wet paint on top of wet paint. Beth: So if you paint wet paint over wet, you're going to smear the under layer. Steven: And you can see
that, if you look especially at the women up on the cliff. Look at their dresses.
Do you see, for instance, in the woman that's close
to us, the way in which there's that white at the
bottom of her dress ... I mean, look at the way that the
bell of the dress is pushed up against the back of her
legs, really giving you a sense of that wind. and then the strokes are actually moving in that direction, as well,
but look at that way in which the white pushes down into the
red and picks some of it up. So this is wet paint that
is pushing other wet paint across that surface. Beth: We could see that, too,
in the figure in the background where the white that
he's added on top of the red color of the parasol is
smearing that red under layer. Steven: That's right and that
is really different from, for instance, the horizon line. You'll notice that there's a
cool almost jade-like green, but you'll also notice
that there are areas where the paint seems to skip
over an under layer and that under layer of even paler green was dry and actually
had still ridges in it and so when he drew his brush across it, it picked up those ridges. So this is wet paint over dried. Beth: It's just this incredible
knowledge of his materials and what he needs to
do with those materials for him to achieve the effect
that he wants to achieve. Steven: Well, that's right.
I think he's there for a [freed] to really pay
attention to what he's seeing. Beth: This is a painting that's
about the pleasure of seeing. It's a tourist moment. These figures are enjoying
their walk along the cliff. They're looking out at
this lovely picturesque landscape of cliffs and sea
and sky and the clouds moving. We have this visual pleasure
and they're experiencing visual pleasure. This is about looking in the modern world, a kind of experience of
being a middle-class person at their leisure on holiday,
something that we can all relate to. Steven: But painted in
a way that brings us in, in a wonderfully intimate and direct way, so that we feel the wind, too. (wind blowing) (piano music playing)