Saturday 1 November 2014

CLAUDE MONET - ROUEN CATHEDRAL SERIES - FREE LESSON

I spent the day with Claude Monet while teaching my "Paint a Masterpiece" class. I will show my demo on tomorrow's blog, meanwhile I thought it a good time to share a study I completed earlier in the year but never posted. 

THE CATHEDRAL AT ROUEN

In the early spring of 1893 and again in 1894, Claude Monet rented a room overlooking the entrance of Rouen Cathedral and spent many hours painting 30 canvases intended for exhibit in Paris. 

In the spring I read a great blog by Cindy Michaud, MEETING MONET, which linked to a cute slide show of 10 paintings by Claude Monet of Rouen Cathedral arranged according to time of day. Why stop at 10, I thought? So I set to finding the 30 paintings and arranging them in order. Arranging the paintings involved the careful examination of the way light and shadow fell on the building. I spent days in the company of Claude Monet, studying his brushstrokes, colour theory, mixology etc. It was very illuminating.

I feel as if I took a trip to France. It is totally absorbing spending days like this with a Master like Monet. What an incredible variation in colour Monet found in that stone building. Beautiful as it is as a grey stone building, Monet enshrined it forever in glorious technicolour.

Unfortunately my computer froze and refused to save the Pic Monkey file, so I took a small print screen and three larger ones (below). I hope you enjoy the study as much as I did creating it.

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2 comments:

  1. Bravo! I was interested in seeing all of the views and paintings. Thank you. Monet is a character in the historical novel I'm finishing. I decided that my last treatment of him would be through one of his paintings of the Rouen Cathedral, feeling that it would best represent his daring to dissolve matter into light.

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    1. Thank you. Post a link to your book here when its published. I’m sure many readers would be interested. This has been a very popular post.

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