Monet: Painter of Light (Part II)
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
In his later years, Monet captured the light by painting series of the same scene painted at different times of day. The landscape paintings of his haystack series is especially well known, and you can almost tell the time of day by the shadows in the painting.
Most of the Impressionists were not accepted into the juried Salon exhibits, so they held their own exhibits allowing everyone to enter. At the first one in 1874, among other works, Monet showed his painting, Impression: Sunrise. That name inspired one critic to condemn all the paintings as “impressionistic”, or unfinished. Although the name was intended as an insult, the artists liked it and it continues to this day.