Monet, We Hardly Knew You: Traveling Art Exhibit Reveals the Truth About the Impressionist Painter

[PaintingMania]

Claude Monet, Impressionist painter, fooled us all. He may even have
fooled himself.

Monet is known for his atmospheric and impressionist paintings of
gardens, water lilies, flowers, cathedrals and haystacks. Many love
his paintings. Others think his works are a mess.

Even Alicia Silverstone's character in Clueless ridicules the
Impressionist master
inadvertently.

Cher: "No, she's a full on Monet."

Tai: "What's a monet?"

Cher: "It's like a painting, see? From far away, it's OK, but up
close, it's a big old mess."

The one truth about Monet that had been well-established, even by the
man himself, was that he did not pre-draw his paintings. In a true
painterly fashion, his paintbrush did the drawing directly onto
canvas, no pencil required.

Monet himself even said, "No one is an artist unless he carries his
picture in his head before painting it, and is sure of his method and
composition."

His paintings reflect a seemingly spontaneous, of the moment
paintings. His famous paintings relay a momentary "impression."

But there was more behind these Impressionist paintings than we all
knew.

Behind his vision, before he translated his impression to canvas in
thick globs of oil paint, he may have done a lot more drawing and than
anyone realized. He may have spent more time planning those wonderful
paintings, and perhaps they were not so spontaneous after all.