To read more about Charlotte Mason picture study and see the other Picture Study Aids I have available, click here.
People discuss my art and pretend to understand as if it were necessary to understand, when it’s simply necessary to love.
Claude Monet
As I mentioned last month, I’ve been updating my older Picture Study Aids by adding another piece to each of them (bringing the total up to seven) and offering printed versions of those that were only available as PDFs before. This week, I am posting the final one, and the artist who receives the most searches on my site gets a turn: Claude Monet! The man who gave the Impressionist movement its name deserves this honor, and I’m glad to be able to offer a Picture Study Aid for him as he truly is a giant in the world of art.
Chances are, you’ve seen at least one of his paintings in your lifetime, possibly printed on a necktie or made into a calendar. While I don’t necessarily think using the work of master artists in commercial endeavors is a bad thing, sometimes, when an artist is as popular as he is, you can get a little tired of seeing his work and not truly value it. In my experience, I didn’t really begin to appreciate his skill and vision until I saw one of his pieces in person and realized what a master of technique and color he was.
You can get an idea of it in the above piece, Woman with a Parasol, or Madame Monet and Her Son. The brushstrokes for the clouds behind her almost seem to be really comprised of tiny drops of sunlight. In his numerous pictures of the ocean, the waves are crowned with blindingly white crests. Some of his paintings are repetitive (as in his Rouen Cathedral series), but I don’t think it was for lack of content, but rather, the desire to explore a thing and make it alive in paint.
This 26-page Picture Study Aid includes a summary of Monet’s early life, key topics about seven of his paintings (see below), resources for further reading (which you can also find on the Living Art Book Archive), seven printable versions of the paintings (without artist names or titles) with the PDF, and a self-portrait of the artist in the printed version of the guide.
The pieces covered include:
- Garden at Sainte-Adresse (1866)
- Impression, Sun Rising (1872)
- Boulevard des Capucines (1873)
- Woman with a Parasol – Madame Monet and Her Son (1875)
- Fishing Boats (1883)
- Rouen Cathedral (1892)
- Waterlilies and Japanese Bridge (1899)
I also have high-quality printed versions of the guide itself as well as professionally printed copies of art available in the shop.
Resources
Monet is extremely popular, which means many quality resources exist to supplement your education about him. Because he was such a large part of the Impressionist movement, books containing collections of Impressionist works are not complete without him. I think these are a wonderful way to expose your children to art and can usually be found reasonably priced, either used or in the discount area of bookstores like Barnes and Noble. One caution, however, is to make sure the content aligns with your family’s values before handing it over to your child, as many Impressionist painters often included nudity in their work.
For books specifically about Monet, I found the following list helpful in putting together this picture study aid:
For younger children, I recommend the following:
- Linnea in Monet’s Garden by Christina Björk and Lena Anderson
- Katie and the Waterlily Pond by James Mayhew
- Monet’s Impressions by Claude Monet
- The Magical Garden of Claude Monet by Laurence Anholt
For older children, the following are good options:
- The Life and Art of Claude Monet by Sara Pappworth
- Claude Monet: Founder of French Impressionism by Danielle Haynes
- Inspiring Artists: Claude Monet by Susie Brooks
Discovering Great Artists by MaryAnn F Kohl and Kim Solga also includes a project specific to Monet.
(These are also available on the Claude Monet Living Art Book Archive page.)
Caveats
This guide is by no means an exhaustive analysis or study of each piece, and that is intentional. I tried to keep it all very simple in the spirit of there being “no talk about schools of painting, little about style; consideration of these matters comes in later life, the first and most important thing is to know the pictures themselves. As in a worthy book we leave the author to tell his own tale, so do we trust a picture to tell its tale through the medium the artist gave it. In the region of art as else-where we shut out the middleman.” (vol 6 pg 216)
Download
You can get your copy of the Picture Study Aid or art prints at the link below!
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