Monet's poppy field. "poppy field" - an installation inspired by the canvases of Claude Monet

Claude Monet. Poppies. 1773 Musée d'Orsay, Paris

“Poppies”, one of the most famous works of Claude Monet, I saw in. However, at the time, she didn't look at it properly. As a fan, my eyes just ran wide from all those masterpieces that are in this museum!

Later, of course, I have already considered the "Maki" properly. And I found that in the museum I didn’t even notice a few interesting details. If you look at the picture more closely, you will probably have at least three questions:

1. Why are poppies so big?
2. Why did Monet depict two almost identical pairs of figures?
3. Why did the artist not draw the sky in the picture?

I will answer these questions in order.

1. Why are poppies so big?

Poppies are shown very large. Most of them are the size of the head of the depicted child. And if you take the poppies from the background and bring them closer to the figures in the foreground, then they will be even larger than the head of both the child and the depicted woman. Why is it so unrealistic?

In my opinion, Monet deliberately increased the size of the poppies: this is how he once again preferred to convey a vivid visual impression, rather than the realism of the depicted objects.

Here, by the way, one can draw a parallel with his technique of depicting water lilies in his later works.

For clarity, look at fragments of paintings with water lilies from different years (1899-1926). The top work is the earliest (1899), the bottom is the latest (1926). Obviously, over time, water lilies became more and more abstract and less detailed.

Apparently "Poppies" - this is just a harbinger of the predominance of abstract art in the later paintings of Monet.

Paintings by Claude Monet. 1. Top left: Water lilies. 1899 d. Private collection. 2. Top right: Water lilies. 1908 d. Private collection. 3. In the middle: A pond with water lilies. 1919 Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. 4. Bottom: Lilies. 1926 Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City.

2. Why are there two pairs of identical figures in the picture?

It turns out that it was also important for Monet to show movement in his painting. He achieved this in an unusual way, depicting a barely visible path on a hill among flowers, as if trodden between two pairs of figures.

At the bottom of a hill with poppies, his wife Camille and son Jean are depicted. Camilla is traditionally depicted with a green umbrella, just like in the painting “Woman with an umbrella”.

Upstairs on a hillock is another couple of a woman and a child, for whom Camilla and her son most likely also posed. Therefore, the two pairs are similar.

Claude Monet. Poppies. Fragment. 1873 Musée d'Orsay, Paris.

This pair of figures on a hill is depicted, perhaps solely for the visual effect of movement, which Monet so aspired to.

3. Why didn't Monet paint the sky?

Another noteworthy point in : notice how poorly the sky is drawn right down to the bare sections of the canvas left.

Claude Monet. Poppies. Fragment. 1873

Título original: Poppies at argenteuil

Year of creation: 1873

Musee d'Orsay, Paris.

Oscar Claude Monet (November 14, 1840 - December 5, 1926) was a French painter, one of the founders of Impressionism.

The painting Field of Poppies (1873), presented at the first Impressionist exhibition, depicts Monet's wife Camille and their son Jean in a field near their home in Argenteuil. As in many other works by Monet, Camille is drawn with an umbrella in her hands, and its graceful outlines give the picture a special charm. Wanting to convey a sense of movement, Monet added a second pair of figures (also modeled on Camille and Jean) on top of the hill. They are connected to the figures in the foreground by a barely noticeable path running through the grass. Monet painted "Field of Poppies" in the open air, on a small portable canvas. Although the painting conveys a natural, spontaneous feeling, it is carefully composed. This is expressed not only in the fact that the artist repeated the figures on it twice, but also in the choice of angle, which is set in such a way that the bright poppies that fill the left side of the composition are located diagonally along which Camille and Jean walk, as if leaving outside of the picture. The rich color and movement that fills this section of the picture is in measured contrast with the calm tones of the upper right edge of the canvas, where the terracotta roof of the house skillfully links the background with the foreground of the composition.

Description of the painting by Claude Monet “Poppies” (At Argenteuil)

Monet's work "Poppies", his second name "Field of poppies at Argenteuil", was written by the artist in 1873. The landscape of the poppy field depicted in the picture, with a small ridge of trees, as if separating the sky from the earth, at first gives a sense of the simplicity of the plot. But looking deeper into the picture, you realize that the first impression was deceptive.

The picture can be figuratively divided by two perpendicular lines into four sections. The horizontal line, as if roughly and clearly defined, cuts a slightly visible, virtual vertical line. The house depicted on the canvas is a kind of center of the intersection of two lines, connecting the composition into one.

The picture is noteworthy for its semantic and sensual load, displayed by the silhouettes of women with children, located on the top of the hill and its slope. The woman and boy we see in the foreground of the painting are none other than the artist's wife and son. An unusual composition gives an illusory vision of a picture in a picture. The repeated image of silhouettes gives a sense of the movement of women with children along an inconspicuous path. The tree towering above the hill increases the fullness and importance of this part of the work.

The right, almost colorless, part contrasts against the background of a blooming poppy field and is the background for the female silhouette depicted at the intersection of adjacent sections of the picture.

With just a few brush strokes, the artist outlined the sky. The unpainted parts of the canvas show the author's reluctance to focus on the upper part of the canvas.

Taken together, the picture is perceived as a commitment to earthly values ​​that are of paramount importance. In order to solve the task set for himself, the artist resorted to all the possibilities available to him to convey his vision of the storyline of the picture.

The painting Field of Poppies (1873), shown at the first Impressionist exhibition, depicts Monet's wife Camille and their son Jean in a field near their home in Argenteuil. As in many other works by Monet, Camille is drawn with an umbrella in her hands, and its graceful outlines give the picture a special charm.

Monet painted "Field of Poppies" in the open air, on a small portable canvas. Although the painting conveys a natural, spontaneous feeling, it is carefully composed. This is expressed not only in the fact that the artist repeated the figures on it twice, but also in the choice of angle, which is set in such a way that the bright poppies that fill the left side of the composition are located diagonally along which Camille and Jean walk, as if leaving outside of the picture. The rich bloom and movement that fills this section of the picture is in measured contrast with the calm tones of the upper right edge of the canvas, where the terracotta roof of the house skillfully links the background with the foreground of the composition.

passion for flowers

Throughout his life, Monet was very fond of painting flowers - field, garden or cut, they are constantly present in his landscapes.

Monet once admitted that the two biggest passions in his life are painting and gardening. When he painted flowers, both of these passions combined. In Field of Poppies, as in many of his other canvases, Monet enjoys wild, vibrant flowers. Several beautiful still lifes of Monet with cut flowers are known, but most of all he liked to paint flowers that grew in his gardens, first in Argenteuil, and later in Giverny. In 1871, Monet moved with his family to Argenteuil to acquire his first home and his first garden there. However, the main passion in the life of the artist was his garden in Giverny. Monet selected flowers for his garden so that they were arranged in a certain order, were of contrasting color and bloomed all year round. In his garden, he planted many unusual flowers. Monet's passion for colors was shared by many other Impressionist artists, most notably Gustave Caillebotte. “Be sure to come on Monday, as agreed,” he wrote to his friend Monet. “All my irises will just be in bloom.”

Obsession with light and color

Monet's obsession with light and color resulted in years of research and experimentation, the purpose of which was to capture on canvas the fleeting, elusive shades of nature.

MONET'S PAINTINGs gave rise to a new trend in painting - impressionism, and Monet himself is recognized as the greatest and most typical representative of this trend. Throughout his long life, Monet steadily followed the basic rules of impressionism - to capture scenes of modern life on canvas (for Monet, these are landscapes) and to work outdoors.

WORKING IN THE PLAIN AIR The practice of an artist working in the open air (plein air) was not something completely new. As early as the beginning of the 19th century, the English artist John Constable often painted his sketches and oil studies in nature. In the 1840s, following his example, a group of French artists gathered in the village of Barbizon near the Forest of Fontainebleau with the aim of painting landscapes that were supposed to depict "true nature". Camille Corot, highly regarded by many Impressionists for his non-idealized view of nature, also painted in oils en plein air, urging artists to "follow their first impression".

Most important to Monet's development as an artist was his youthful friendship with the landscape painter Eugène Boudin, who specialized in small, airy seaside landscapes that he created outdoors. Bodin insisted that Monet join him during one of these sessions in Le Havre. “Suddenly, the veil fell from my eyes,” Monet later wrote.

There, in Le Havre, Monet met the Dutch artist Johann Bartold Jonkind, who tried to convey the most delicate shades of air and mood in his seascapes. Monet later said of him: "He was the man who finally developed my eyesight."

WHAT THE EYE REALLY SEES Monet learned that a painting painted outdoors has a unique freshness and vitality that cannot be achieved by working in a studio where the artist imagines in advance the work he is going to create. Monet's advice to artists clearly reveals his own approach to painting: “Try to forget what you see in front of you - a tree, a house, a field, whatever. Just think that there is a small blue square there, an oblong pink figure there, and continue until you have a naive impression of the picture that is in front of your eyes. Thus, the impression is a visual impulse created by what is seen at this particular moment.

A REVOLUTIONARY IDEA For all the Impressionists, and for Monet in particular, the main purpose of art was to capture the elusive, fleeting impression. At that time, such an idea seemed revolutionary and shocked no less than the undisguised realism of Courbet in NEW TECHNIQUE To achieve his goals, the artist needed new painting techniques. Monet, in particular, developed his own writing technique, applying broad, coarse strokes, bold scattered dots, dashes, zigzags and thick strokes to the canvas with a short brush. Monet simultaneously worked on the entire space of the painting, believing, as he later said, that "the first coat of paint should cover as much of the canvas as possible and no matter how roughly it is applied."

In a completely new, revolutionary way, Monet used color, inspired, no doubt, by Eugène Chevrel's discoveries about the way of visual perception. Chevreul proved that adjacent primary colors of the color wheel soften each other, and the greatest contrast is achieved when complementary colors are adjacent. Another important discovery was that color is not an inherent property of objects. Color is simply the way light mixes as it bounces off the surface of an object. Like his fellow Impressionists, Monet usually used a limited palette, preferring pure, unblended colors and painting on canvases pre-coated with white or cream primers, which made the applied colors lighter and brighter.

Another important discovery that influenced the vision of artists was photography. In the photographs of that time, moving objects are perceived as blurry spots, and only stationary objects have clear outlines. This effect was clearly reflected in the ant-like figures of people that we see in Monet's painting Boulevard des Capucines (1873).

CHANGING THE IMAGE OBJECT

It is very interesting to trace how Monet's attitude towards the objects depicted has changed over the course of a long life. Despite the fact that he was constantly absorbed in the play of light, in his early paintings, Monet most often depicted human figures painted in the usual manner against the backdrop of the landscape.

However, closer to the 1880s, Monet is increasingly attracted to nature in its purest form. If figures or inanimate objects appear in the paintings of this period, they usually play a supporting role and fade into the background.

SERIES OF PAINTINGS

Despite the fact that artists at all times created a series of sketches of one scene, before Monet there was no one who would have painted the same object several times under different lighting and different weather conditions. Monet's paintings represent a whole series depicting haystacks, poplars, the cathedral in Rouen, the view of London from the Thames and, finally, water lilies.

Monet's London landscapes, painted in 1899-1901, with their diffused light and diffused color, are virtuosic, dramatic works of art, from which one can trace the evolution of the artist's style towards an almost abstract manner. They show the artist's gradual progress towards the object that he will paint in all the remaining years of his life, creating his gardens and turning them into rare works of art.

From about 1905 until the end of his days, Monet concentrated entirely on water lilies. These paintings, in which the cups of water lilies literally materialize on the surface of the water, which does not have a horizon line, have become studies that capture an endless and non-repeating variety of color and light. In fact, these series of paintings, like any brilliant work of art, defy explanation. These are the works of a poet who subtly feels nature and is able to convey its beauty in his painting.

Can you imagine that in the middle of the Canadian urban jungle suddenly blossomed poppy field? It sounds implausible, but nothing is impossible for the art world. Yes, and there have already been precedents: not so long ago it appeared in Zweibrücken, so poppies in Montreal are already a kind of continuation of the flower tradition.

The creator of the "flower" installation - artist and architect Claude Cormier, an ardent admirer of impressionism. Love for paintings Claude Monet already once inspired him to create, which resembled a blooming wisteria. The current creation in Montreal is a tribute and admiration for the "Poppy Fields" of the great artist. Recall that Claude Monet tirelessly painted the green expanses of Giverny, dotted with scarlet flowers, from his paintings one can make up a whole “poppy” cycle.

The installation required 5,060 red, green and white markers that dot the alley in front of the Museum of Fine Arts. The work of Claude Cordier is part of the annual exhibition. Everyone can admire the luxurious poppy field in the middle of the asphalt sea.

By the way, the works of the famous impressionist are not the first time inspire artists to create works of art. We have already introduced our readers to, reminiscent of the Blue House in Zaandam, as well as a series of advertising posters, one of which depicts Monet with another favorite flower - water lilies.