Brush Up on Your Monet!

July 08, 2011

Claude Monet's most famous life work was his collection of Water Lilies, a series of paintings that was the focus of the last 30 years of his life. There are over 250 paintings in the Water Lily series, several of them painted in triptychs. A Triptych is a tri-paneled work of art, and only two completed sets of triptychs of Water Lilies are housed in the United States. One complete triptych is on display at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art now through August 7. It truly is a once in a lifetime opportunity to admire a sublime work of art collected in a rarely seen complete set.

Claude Monet is considered the founder of the French Impressionist movement, the art form that believed in the placement of perception before nature in artistic expression. The phrase "impressionism" was coined by an art critic who disparaged Monet's 1872 work, "Impression, Sunrise". It quickly caught on as the name of an increasingly popular artistic style. Monet's legacy is not only the outstanding body of his work, but the acceptance of the ongoing struggle of artists to express their own perceptions of the world around us.

To get yourself in the mood for an outing to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, MCPL features several titles about Claude Monet and the study of French Impressionism:

DVD:

The Impressionists (Narrated by Edward Herrmann)

Monet Painter of Light

Book:

Monet: Life and Works by Marianne Sachs

Claude Monet by Peter Harrison

The Taste of Giverny: At Home With Monet and the American Impressionists by Claire Joyes

Come on in and check it out!

Brenda N.
North Independence Branch