Art | Pictures of the Month | June 2008
Picture of the Month
June 2008
The Church at Varengeville [1882]
by Claude Monet (1840-1926)
This is one of seven plein air works Monet painted in 1882 of the medieval church at Varengeville — a fishing village in Normandy. During the 1880s he increasingly chose to paint directly from nature and visited Northern France repeatedly to study its enchanting coastline.
This glowing landscape breathtakingly evokes the last haunting minutes of sunset on a hazy summer’s evening and illustrates Monet’s Impressionist techniques with its painterly immediacy and juxtaposition of complementary colours. The artist’s vibrant palette sets the foreground foliage ablaze with the sinking sunlight in a rush of fiery oranges, reds and yellows. Looser strokes of cool greens, lilacs and blues describe the shady vista behind and sweep upwards to the misty hilltop, which is swathed in gilded pinks and warm ochres. Here, the silhouetted organic form of Varengeville church dissolves into the gentle mauve contours of the surrounding cliffs. Beyond, a calm ocean of dappled pastel blue, minty green and violet melts into a golden apricot sky, where a few wandering clouds float silently past.
The asymmetrical composition demonstrates Monet’s study of Japanese prints, with the spindly foreground trees echoing the undulating cliffs beyond. Monet probably worked on this canvas over several sessions just at the correct time of day, allowing him to study the effects of light on the view at first hand. This method allowed Monet to invigorate his paintings with the physical energy of his emotive responses to the scene before him. While the gradually built-up layers of paint infuse the picture surface with a rich and sensual depth, the contre-jour lighting (i.e. light coming from the back) wonderfully captures the feeling of early evening and allows one to pinpoint intuitively the time of day. This instils in the viewer the authentic experience and ephemeral beauty of the original scene — one can hear the seagulls wheeling overhead, smell the heady salty air and feel the warm breeze of summer dusk. A chromatic feast for the eyes, the colours shimmering and dancing over the canvas, this masterpiece must be seen in reality to experience its power fully, and with June upon us it seems a fitting work to contemplate and enjoy — perhaps giving us a flavour of the hot summer months that we hope lie ahead.
Kathryn Murray, Gallery Assistant
A 15-minute gallery talk focusing on this picture and exhibition will be held on Thursday 12 June at 1.30 pm.
| What is your favourite work of art in the Barber Institute galleries? Drop us a line at info@barber.org.uk and let us know, and we could feature your choice in a future Picture of the Month. |