Dame dans le jardin (Woman in the Garden) Sainte-Adresse 1867 by Claude Monet 800mmx990mm, copy by Derek Kosbab 2010
Claude Monet, was labeled an impressionist artist and is famous for his water-lily paintings done in the years leading up to his death. Claude Monet liked the label impressionist and said, ‘I am, and I always wish to be, an Impressionist.’
Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement that began as a loose association of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence in the 1870s and 1880s. The name of the movement is derived from the title of a Claude Monet work, Impression, Sunrise (Impression, soleil levant), which provoked the critic Louis Leroy to coin the term in a satiric review published in Le Charivari.
Characteristics of Impressionist paintings include relatively small, thin, yet visible brush strokes, open composition, emphasis on the accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities (often accentuating the effects of the passage of time), ordinary subject matter, the inclusion of movement as a crucial element of human perception and experience, and unusual visual angles.
In particular, Monet painted en plein air—in the open air—and mostly painted landscapes. It is striking to me how the French impressionists began painting landscapes in a style that really captured the light and Monet’s landscapes, especially those with water in them, really capture the effects of sunlight.
Monet painted this picture in the garden he loved at Saint-Adresse. The woman with the white umbrella is the wife of his cousin Lecadre. Judging by the length of the shadows it was probably painted mid-afternoon. Sunlight bathes the grass and highlights the blossom on the trees. One can almost sense the heat. In this painting can be seen the Impressionist emphasis on the accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities. Look carefully: I am under the tree just to the right of the central tree, sitting on my haunches in the shade.
Woman in the Garden
$1,500.00 via PayPal
Acrylic on canvas: 1000mm x 1200mm