Several years ago when I was ten I had an opportunity to
travel to France. I went to a few museums which I liked
including Yhe Louvre and The Pompidou Center. The museum I found
most interesting was Mus’ee D’ Orsay. All the paintings at
Mus’ee D’ Orsay were impressionist paintings. Claude Monet was
the artist who intrigued me the most. What I liked particularly
about his paintings was a lot of them consisted of his wife and
his son. My absolute favorite painting was Woman with a Parasol.
There are a few different paintings of his wife with a parasol
which look quite similar. Some are by herself and at least one
is with her son in the background. That is the one I chose to
critique.
Claude Monet was born in Giverny, France about fifty miles
from Paris on November 14,1840. His family moved to Le’ Havre
when he was five. He thought living on the coast was crucial to
the development of his visual responses, particularly to the
light and atmosphere which so governed his inspiration. (monet
pg.7) Monet lived and traveled several places throughout his
life. He married his wife Camille in 1870. He had two sons,
Jean and Michel. Camille died in 1879 from tuberculosis(mount
pg.309) when Claude was only thirty- seven years old. He did
remarry Alice Hoschede’ in 1892 but there is no achknowledgement
of Claude painting her in any of his paintings, only his first
wife Camille. He was in great agony when she died.
Monet is credited with the birth of impressionism.(martini
pg.5) Monet says,” I paint as a bird sings.” His painting
‘Impression, Sunrise” of 1872 gave the impressionist movement its
name.(Monet pg.6)
Impressionism is described by myself as someone who looks at
a scene and then tries to create it in a way to make it look
unreal yet extrodinary. The word “impressionism” conjures up a
brightly colored, modestly sized ...