Claude Monet

Within a decade Monet had moved away from the early caricatures that provided little more than pocket money and, along with Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Frederick Bazille had begun a brand new artistic technique called Impressionism. Impressionism captures a single moment in time, much the way a camera would. This is done with paint mainly by using light. The play of sunlight shining through the trees or glinting off ocean waves that, in just a breath’s time, would change and never again be seen in that exact way. No one produces this aspect better than Monet. His painting Coming into Port-Goulphar, Belle-Ile is a sea scape in the Impressionist style. Sunlight glints off the waves as they roll gentle towards the shoreline. The cliff side and rocks are half hidden in the shadows created by their own craggy outcroppings combined with the natural angle of the sun.

Monet did paint people, though the vast majority of his paintings are landscapes of different varieties. Individuals in the paintings were usually not overly emphasized, the overall scene having more importance than a single individual. The one person who crops up in his works again and again is his wife, Camille. At first she was simply his model, posing in costume for various scenes Monet had wanted to paint. Eventually they became lovers, had a child, and then married. Again and again we see Camille in Monet’s paintings, sometimes at a distance as in Woman with a Red Scarf where we see her looking in at us from outside of a window. Other times she is part of a crowd as in The Picnic. In this painting not only is Camille amongst a group of other individuals, but Camille posed multiple times in different costumes. This way Monet saved a great deal of money by only having one model instead of many. The man portrayed is his fellow painter Bazille, who was none too thrilled with the idea of being on the other side of the canvas, but was a good sport about it anyway.