Claude Monet Paintings
1840 - 1926 France, Impressionism
The Japanese Bridge at Giverny, 1896
Oil on canvas
Private collection Landscapes
Monet's work went through a long transition, from early naturalism to Impressionism, to studies of fleeting light effects, to views of his prized garden and the The Japanese Bridge he had built specially. Japanese prints had a significant effect on European artists in the second half of the 19th century, with their decorative, flat quality, and the frontal quality of their compositions. Monet began to paint his water lilies, first as part of the Giverny garden ensemble of water, bridge and flowers. But in his later life he began to zero in on the water lilies almost exclusively, using the surface of the water as a metaphor for the painting's surface, with freely moving lines, areas, and dabs of color. The orchestration of the color relationships is also the subject of the paintings. They were large rectangles, much wider than high, which Monet placed next to one another in a continuous circle, inside a specially constructed building, so that the viewer could turn 360 degrees and see all water - all painting.
