First Year Contextual

Claude-Oscar Monet

Monet was one of the founding fathers of the impressionist movement and the most prolific practitioner of the movement’s philosophy of expression their own perspective and perceptions of nature rather than just the plain, old view of the landscape that had been laid before the artist.

The picture above is one I have been instantly attracted to, it displays a dark castle looking structure in the background and a sea that is reflecting the sun in the sky and shows the shadow created by the hills beside it. The use of colors and many other shades created a masterpiece that adds great detail and a unique perspective from the artist, which the impressionist movement philosophy represents. The many colors almost like auras, especially around the sun with the white representing the middle and hottest point, spreading to yellow, then orange then red. I found it interesting that the sky isn’t just one color or just a couple of shades of the same color, this could be showing an aurora which can be seen as northern lights, although I am not sure, but this is my take on the piece, the unique things like that is what drew me to this picture and I believe it capture both a light and darker element. The darker element is the shadows and looming, dark castle upon the hilltop that casts a great shadow across the raging sea and the lighter side is the sun’s reflection on the water, creating a break within the dark shadow and giving it life in an area. Again this is only speculation to what he wanted us to see but this, in my opinion is a great piece that has multiple interpretations, but I do believe this was intended as the almost “Beauty lives in the eye of the beholder” style motto the Impressionists had gave way to allow the view to extracts a different interpretation than the artist, or maybe even the same in some cases.