Monday, September 9, 2013

September Study - The Cliffs at Etretat by Claude Monet

Claude Monet
French (1840-1926)
1885
Oil on canvas

Sorry for the late posting for the September study!  Kids have been back in school for a whole week so there's no really good excuse except that it was a busy week!

Here's a little bit of background about this month's master painting:
During the 1860s, '70s, and '80s the village of Etretat on the Normandy coast became an increasingly fashionable vacation spot for families from Paris and other cities in Northern France. Painters such as Gustave Courbet and Giovanni Boldini helped to encourage the popularity of the place, recording the spectacular shapes of the cliffs and the changeable weather conditions of the English Channel. In Monet's painting, the cliffs rise out of the water -- half in cool shadow, half in warm, bright sunlight -- dwarfing the tiny boats with their orange sails, which glide between and around them. Unlike Boldini, who uses the cliffs as the background for a picturesque image of locals and tourists crowding around a fishing boat in Return of the Fishing Boats, Etretat, Monet focuses his attention -- and ours -- on the light that reflects off the constantly shifting surface of the water and the solid, craggy faces of the monolithic rocks. 


Azra Iqbal - The Cliffs at Etretat after Claude Monet



Karen d'Angeac Mihm - The Cliffs at Etretat after Claude Monet
 Oil on 11x14 canvas paper


Renate Arends - The Cliffs at Etretat after Claude Monet
Watercolor on Aquaboard - 20cm x 30cm