Rich's Art Journey

This week, I wanted to talk about Claude Moent's “Bathers at La Grenouillere.” which is in the collection of the National Gallery in London. Claude Monet was born in Paris in 1840. His father was a small businessman and the family moved to Le Harve about five years later so that his father could join a wholesale grocery firm that was owned by family members. Thus, Monet came from a middle class background. From an early age, Claude displayed a talent for drawing. Over time, he developed a reputation in Le Harve for his comic drawings and caricatures and was able to derive income from the sale of such works. With such a beginning, one might well expect that Monet would have developed into a portrait painter. However, one day when he went out to watch Eugene Boudin work on a landscape, he realized that landscapes were what he wanted to paint. “I had seen what painting could be, simply by the example of this painter working with such independence at ...

 This week, I am taking a look at Edouard Manet's A Bar at The Folies Bergere, which is in the collection of London's Courtauld Institute. It is considered Manet's last major work and remains one of his most famous. As discussed below, this painting is in several ways similar to Manet's Corner of a Cafe Concert, which I discussed last week. The painting presents a scene from a lively evening at the Folies Bergere. Manet frequented the cafes and music halls that were becoming popular in Paris in the second half of the 19 th century often bringing with him a sketch pad. The Folies Bergere opened in 1869 and soon became one of the most popular of these venues. It offered operettas and pantomimes at that time. At the time of Manet's painting, the lavish, semi- nude spectaculars which are associated with the Folies Bergere were still in the future. The painting was done in 1882. Manet did a series of preparatory sketches and then re-created a bar in ...

This week, I thought I would talk about Edouard Manet's Corner of a Cafe Concert, a painting which I saw in the National Gallery in London. I like Manet's work not just because it is pleasing to the eye but because it conveys emotion. I particularly like his ability to make faces thought provoking. Edouard Manet was a French artists born in 1832 in Paris. His father was a successful jurist while his mother was the daughter of a diplomat. His parents wanted him to enter one of the respectable professions rather than pursue his love of art. It was not until after Manet had failed his entrance exams for the naval academy that his family relented and allowed him to study art. While his family's resistance to his desired career must have been emotionally difficult for the young Manet, his family background provided a firm foundation for his art. Because he was financially secure, he was able to travel around Europe to view the works of past masters and to av...