Monet’s Art Techniques

According to most, Claude Monet was the father of Impressionism. What is impressionism you ask? Well as the Oxford Dictionary of English says, Impressionism is;

• n. [mass noun] a style or movement in painting originating in France in the 1860s, characterized by a concern with depicting the visual impression of the moment, especially in terms of the shifting effect of light and colour.

“The Impressionist painters repudiated both the precise academic style and the emotional concerns of romanticism, and their interest in objective representation, especially of landscape, was influenced by early photography. Impressionism met first with scorn, but soon became highly influential. Its chief exponents included Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, Cézanne, and Degas.”

Monet was first and foremost a painter and the media that he favoured most was indeed oil on canvas, as so many of his famous works are painted with this medium. But Monet’s drawings and pastels are also of course known by those who know their art.

Monet enjoyed painting landscapes and nature, but also divulged into the odd urban setting – as most Impressionists are fascinated by the colour and the atmosphere that populated settings have to offer.

To compliment his countryside, rural and ocean scenes, he usually added some life by painting people as well – either in the background or as the main subject as he shows in his painting “The Walk, Woman with a Parasol”.