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MONET, from page 9
extremely loosely structured, and the color was applied in strong distinct strokes as if no reworking of the pigment had been attempted. This technique was calculated to suggest that the artist had indeed captured a spontaneous impression of nature.
During the 1870s and '80s Monet gradually refined this technique, and he made many trips to scenic areas of France, especially the Mediterranean and Atlantic coasts, to study the most brilliant effects of light and color possible. By the mid-1880s Monet, generally regarded as the leader of the impressionist school, had achieved significant recognition and financial security. Despite the boldness of his color and the extreme simplicity of his compositions, he was recognized as a master of meticulous observation, an artist who sacrificed neither the true complexities of nature nor the intensity of his own feelings.
In 1890 he was able to purchase some property in the village of Giverny, not far from Paris, and there he began to construct a water garden. The garden was constructed with a lily pond arched with a Japanese bridge and overhung with willows and clumps of bamboo. Beginning in 1906, paintings of the pond and the water lilies occupied him for the remainder of his life; they hang in the Orangerie, Paris; the Art Institute of Chicago; and the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.
Throughout these years he also worked on his other celebrated "series" paintings, groups of works representing the same subject of hay stacks, poplars, Rouen Cathedral, the river Seine seen in varying light, at different times of the day or seasons of the year. Despite failing eyesight, Monet continued to paint almost up to the time of his death, on Dec. 5, 1926, at Giverny.
Funk & Wagnalls New Encyclopedia. Infopedia. Future Vision Multimedia, 1994.
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