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.
.
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.
ReplyDeleteThank 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.
DeleteOh what a wonderful contribution you have made, Ms. Dean. Thank you. Thank you. I tried to do the same thing--by watching the shadow in the arches. My dsequence is slightly different than yours ... not to take one iota away of my admiration for your assembly.
ReplyDeleteI have always loathed to call this "a series;" that always sounded too pro forms to me ...duplication instead of creation. Claude Monet has given us one masterprice after another. When a genius studies LIGHT, we receive a gift of immeasurable proportion. So many thanks, Gwendolyn (PS: Monet actually did over 40 "portraits" of the Rouen Cathedral ... and then selected the ones he wanted exhibited. Those are best known.)