Claude Monet’s Color Palette | Bright Classroom Ideas

No art lesson is complete without a reference to one of the greatest painters, Claude Monet. Here are some useful tips for your next art class.

Oscar-Claude Monet (1840–1926) was a famous French painter born in Paris. He is most famous for being the creator of the Impressionist style of painting who has also been credited as one of the essential artists in igniting the modern art movement.

His philosophy and expression of art mainly focused on landscape paintings and the beauty of nature. Monet’s motivation to capture this countryside beauty led to him re-painting the same scenery repeatedly to capture the passage of light over time and the passing of the seasons.

Through this methodical and repetitious practice, Monet would obtain the ability to depict an image that lay before his eyes masterly. This ability would produce some of the finest and most detailed paintings ever created. His paintings are littered with such color, precision, and emotion, that they must be seen to be believed.

The Initiator of Impressionism

Claude Monet achieved his fame and success by being the inventor and leader of a style of painting that would soon become known as Impressionism. Monet’s particular type of impressionism focused mainly on nature with its relation to how he saw it in that precise moment.

Impressionist painters would accurately represent the ever-changing qualities of light, combined with a perception of movement as the primary focus of their work, for they believed that this ‘moving’ was a crucial part of the human experience.

This is perhaps the most interesting aspect of impressionism. To paint in such a way as to try to capture the movement of time rather than a particular moment in time was truly profound and utterly groundbreaking.

Rules Are Made to be Broken

When Impressionism came onto the scene, it was like nothing ever seen before and broke almost all the rules of academic painting. Instead of following lines and contours, they used free-spirited brush strokes and took to scenes of modern life in motion instead of still life compositions.

Furthermore, Impressionist painters took to the outdoors to get a hands-on and intimate feel for the scenery they depicted. Whereas in the previous model, painters usually painted their portraits…