The Stroll at Giverny
In the painting ‘The
Stroll at Giverny’, 1888, (W 1204), we find one of several
examples of the same kind of long shadows as in our Meadow scene.
Click on 'the Stroll at Giverny' to the right for a shadow
comparison.
This ‘Essai de figure en plein air’ gives a feeling of being an
attempt to paint in the way Monet told Duret in August 1887: ” I’m
working as never before, at some new experiments, figures in the
open air as I understand them, treated like landscapes. It’s an old
dream…it’s so difficult! I’m so involved in it that it’s almost
making me ill” (read more about this in ‘Monet Nature into art’, by
John House, ch.2, p.36).
House continues”...he did not consider them
fully resolved; indeed they seem to have caused him particular
difficulties. But he considered them important enough to exhibit
several of them between 1889 and 1891, including, it seems, some
unsigned canvases”.
In our ‘Meadow scene’ we really get the
feeling, that this is what Monet meant by: “painting Figures –
treated like Landscapes”. The furiously painted water meadow might
as well be the sea at Belle-Ile, and Suzanne - the Pyramid.
Close relationship can also be found with the “Tulip
Fields” – paintings from Holland 1886, - with Windmills like
megalithic figures, (e.g. W1067).
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