🖌️🎨 Claude Monet (1840-1926) - French artist, one of the founders of Impressionism

 🖌️🎨 Claude Monet (1840-1926) - French artist, one of the founders of Impressionism.

🌊Monet and the Sea

Seascapes of Claude Monet

The work of the outstanding impressionist artist Claude Monet, presented through his seascapes.

🌊Beginnings: Childhood in Le Havre

Monet's relationship with the sea began as soon as the young artist moved with his family to the coastal town of Le Havre, Normandy, in the mid-1850s. In these early years, Monet did not feel an immediate attraction to "plein air" painting, and he concentrated on drawing caricatures of neighbors and acquaintances. But his young talent attracted the attention of an artist who had settled in Le Havre a few years earlier, Eugène Boudin, who is still considered one of the greatest marine painters of the 19th century. After a few months, the master convinced the young artist to accompany him on his forays into nature to paint in the open air. Boudin's persistence was not in vain, and Monet admitted a few years later: "If I became an artist, it is thanks to Boudin."

🌊The Making of an Artist: Jongkind the Master

It can be said that Claude Monet's real artistic career began in 1862, when the artist was only 22 years old. Having fallen ill in Algeria during his military service, he was sent back to Le Havre for treatment. Back in Normandy, the young Monet met the man who became, in his own words, his "true teacher", the Dutch artist Johan Barthold Jongkind.

The alcoholic and impulsive Jongkind impressed the young Monet with the effects of light and atmosphere in his seascapes. The Dutch artist’s influence is clearly visible in works such as Pointe de la Heve at Sainte-Adresse (1864, Currier Museum of Art), with its careful and strictly horizontal depiction of the sky and atmosphere. This painting was accepted at the Salon of 1865. Note the work’s realism and use of very defined brushstrokes, which Monet later modified in works such as Rough Sea at Etretat (1868, Paris, Musée d’Orsay). 🌊 Bourgeois Sea: Terrace at Sainte-Adresse

The works Monet painted in Sainte-Adresse in the second half of the 1860s represent a brief change in his representation of the sea. Compared to the wild seascapes of previous years (a style that Monet would later resume), here Monet depicted the sea as an instrument of entertainment for the bourgeoisie, in a style that can be associated with the paintings created for the "Salon of Artists", a "genre" that the artist had been developing in previous years, culminating in the colossal "Luncheon on the Grass", first exhibited in 1866.

🌊 Expanding Horizons: Trips to England and Holland

It was Durand-Ruel, the great patron of the Impressionist artists, who provided financial support for Monet, Pissarro and Boudin on their trip to London in 1870, a trip that continued with their stay in the Netherlands the following year. The English landscape did not initially impress Monet; and in fact he painted very few English landscapes, with the exception of those depicting the Houses of Parliament and the River Thames, a theme to which he would return – with great enthusiasm – on subsequent visits. The truly decisive factor in Monet’s stay in London was his visit to the National Gallery, where he discovered the works of the greatest British landscape painters: John Constable and, above all, Joseph Mallord William Turner. Turner’s seascapes, with their effects of light and atmosphere, influenced Monet’s work in later years.

🌊 The French artist made another trip to England in 1899-1900, in his mature years. And although Monet’s visit to the British Isles will always be remembered for its impressive and famous views of the Houses of Parliament in London, his first stay was a turning point in the biography of the French artist due to the very important influence of Turner on his artistic work.

🌊 And what about the Netherlands? Well, the Netherlands were “love at first sight” for Monet. “Everything is more beautiful than we expected (…). There are enough landscapes here to paint for a lifetime,” he wrote. Monet was immediately enchanted by the Dutch landscape, and especially the town of Zaandam with its boats and windmills. Perhaps contemplating the canvases of Hobbema and van Ruisdael caused him to re-emerge his early admiration for Jongkind. Or perhaps his love for the pure landscape of these old masters inspired the artist to seek new challenges. But the truth is that the Dutch influence is not only evident in Monet’s “Dutch” paintings, but also in many of his seascapes created on the Normandy coast.

🌊 Maturity: The Cliffs of Normandy

Between 1881 and 1883, Monet made a series of trips to several coastal towns in Normandy, such as Dieppe, Pourville or Trouville, where the scenery was attractive enough to satisfy his artistic appetite. Unlike his earlier seascapes, here Monet seemed to focus more on the coastal landscape than on the ocean itself, taking advantage of the spectacle of Normandy’s rugged coastline and its dramatic cliffs.

🌊 Wild Sea, Sea of Light: From Britain to the Mediterranean

In the second half of the 1880s, Monet made two trips to different towns on the French coast, trips that were close in time but very far apart in terms of artistic creativity. Thus, in 1886, Monet rented a room in a small hostel near Belle-Île, where he was immediately captivated by the “beautiful” but also “terrifying” landscape of coastal Brittany, more brutal and ferocious than Normandy. In “Storm, Coast at Belle-Île” (1886, Paris, Musée d’Orsay), the violent waves of the sea crashing against the rocky peaks are clearly reminiscent of “Manneport”, but this time the surface of the sea plays a greater role, and the thick and powerful brushstrokes emphasize the force of the furious storm. This effect of violence and the dark depiction of the rocks are almost constant in the canvases painted in Brittany.

Sources: Arthive; Etsy; G. Fernández – theartwolf.com.