We are starting the last week of this year’s Art Blogmas. Today, I’m sharing with you one of my favourite series of paintings, Claude Monet’s The Water Lilies.
Art Blogmas 2021
Claude Monet is one of the most famous French Impressionist painters. After he decided to follow his dream to become a painter, he moved to Paris. There, he met a group of artists with whom he started to paint and work.
Although he was struggling to exhibit his work at the beginning, he soon became an established artist. His paintings are exhibited in museums all over the world today. Monet is the most famous for his series of water lilies, which consists of around 250 pictures.
I’ll share some of his artworks from the exhibition organised at the beginning of 2020 at the Kunstmuseum Den Haag in this post, . However, if you’d like to see some of these paintings, then Museé Marmottan Monet and Museé de l’Orangerie in Paris are the places to go.
⤷ Read more: Impressionists in Paris
Claude Monet: The Water Lilies
Monet moved with his family to a small French town Giverny in 1883. He spent the next forty years living and painting at his flower garden there. He mostly focused on painting the water lilies between 1909 and 1926.
In his garden, Monet planted numerous trees and flowers. His goal was to make colour compositions for his paintings that way.
Claude Monet wanted to create a series of paintings showing the water lilies. He started to work on larger compositions during the First World War (1914 – 1918). He meant to install them in public spaces, to create sort of a place for meditation.
Standing in front of Claude Monet’s The Water Lilies is almost like a spiritual experience. He’s removing the horizon and any other signs of the real world from them (except the wooden bridge on some of the earlier examples). Monet lets your eyes wander freely around the painting. And is pulling you into his composition of brush strokes, textures, light and colours that way.
⤷ Read more: Virtual museum visits – Monet & the Water Lilies
If you don’t want to miss other paintings I will share with you in this year’s Art Blogmas, be sure to check in here tomorrow at 7:30. Or, follow along on the Culture Tourist Facebook page and Instagram profile.