Impressionist composers focused on conveying mood and atmosphere.Ĭlaude Debussy is viewed as one of the central exponents of Impressionist music (though he himself disliked the title of an Impressionist composer). Impressionism in the visual arts soon blossomed into a similar style and aesthetic in music. Rather than painting an exact likeness or strict representation, the Impressionists endeavoured to convey their perceptions of a scene, often playing with light, employing vague outlines, and utilising subtle colours. ‘Impression, Sunrise’ has been hailed as one of the cornerstones of the Impressionist Movement. We feel present, active observers, yet there’s a vagueness, an indistinctness which seductively draws us into the picture and heightens our curiosity. Monet portrays a supremely calm scene with the misty, foggy atmosphere enveloping the harbour. Most notably, the sun shines a vibrant orange, cutting through the haze and industrial smoke. Cranes, other heavy machinery and factory chimneys complete the scene. Two individuals can be seen in the rowboat in the foreground, while in the background, larger ships and boats inhabit the harbour. Painted in the early 1870s, Monet’s ‘Impression, Sunrise’ depicts a view of the port of Le Havre in north-western France. Monet’s ‘Impression, Sunrise’ ‘Impression, Sunrise’ by Claude Monet I’ve always had more than a passing interest in the painting on the cover, but have never really taken the time to investigate fully – until now. I’ve had this collection of Debussy’s piano pieces for many, many years and couldn’t count how many times I’ve opened it, or how many pieces I’ve chosen for my piano students from it. With more generic titles, my students and I have to get a little more creative. Sometimes a composer will give the performer a helping hand with an evocative title like ‘Lavender Fields’ where it’s not difficult to imagine swathes of purple flowers undulating gently in the golden glow of a Summer sunset. It’s a technique I use a lot with my students. In essence, I’m adding a visual connection or stimulus to a piece of music (or vice versa, an aural stimulus to a piece of art). My goal is to have both the art piece and composition amplify and strengthen the emotions and feelings intrinsic to both works. During those years his brushwork became even looser and freer, coming close to abstract painting.As part of my ‘In Harmony’ series of blog posts, I want to explore linking an artwork (whether it be a painting or photograph) with a specific piece of music. This is how the series of Waterlilies came about, in which he systematically repeated the motif of his lily pond. As his garden grew, it became a central theme of his paintings. In the 1890s Monet took up gardening at his Giverny home. From there they made trips to Normandy, the Mediterranean coast, England, Norway and Italy. In 1883 Monet retired to Giverny, north-east of Paris, with Alice Hoschedé (the wife of the collector of Impressionist works, Ernest Hoschedé, whom he later married after Hoschedé died in 1891) and their children and they spent the rest of their lives there. It was there that he started on the series of paintings repeating similar themes under changing atmospheric conditions. In this village, which was much quieter and more rural than Argenteuil, Monet was extremely productive and, unlike before, focused on the beauty of nature and on capturing solitary landscapes with no trace of human life. From 1878 to 1881 he, his wife Camille and their children lived in Vétheuil, where Camille died. During these years this village on the banks of the Seine became a sort of centre of Impressionism, where he was joined by Camille Pissarro, Alfred Sisley, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Édouard Manet, among others. After living in London and Holland during the Franco-Prussian war, Monet returned to France in 1872 and settled in Argenteuil with his family until 1878. His Impression, Sunrise (Paris, Musée Marmottan Monet), shown in the First Impressionist Exhibition in 1874, gave its name to this style. Monet and Auguste Renoir were the first artists to use the loose brushstrokes characteristic of Impressionism. After studying for a short period at the Académie Suisse in Paris, he took up plein air painting as a self-taught artist, striving to study the effects of light and time on nature. Claude Monet, the undisputed leader of the Impressionists, spent his childhood in the French town of Le Havre, where he began to paint landscapes of the Normandy coast together with Eugène Boudin and Johann Jongkind.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |