MONET, mo'n'a, Claude, French painter: b. Paris, 14 Nov. 1840. He opened a new road to landscape painting by his application of scien tific principles deduced from the laws of light. His work, a magnificent verification of the opti cal discoveries made by Helmholtz and Chev reul, forms the very basis of the Impression ist movement with all its chromatic demonstra tions of light and color. Suppression of local color and the study of reflections by means of complementary colors and division of tones by the process of pure, juxtaposed colors are the essential principles of Impression. Monet's first luminous studies date from about 1885. For years he remained unknown.
Light is the real subject of his pictures. He has treated one and the same site in a series of pictures painted from nature at all hours of the day. The most famous of this series are the 'Hay-ricks,' the 'Poplars,' the 'Cliffs of Etzetat,) the 'Golfe the 'Coins of the 'Cathedrals,' the 'Water Lilies' and the 'Thames.' Monet paints this series from nature. He notes, for example, from 9 to 10 o'clock the most subtle effects of sun light upon a hay-rick; at 10 o'clock he takes up another canvas; and so on from hour to hour, he follows step by step the modifications of the atmosphere. He finishes almost simultaneously the whole series. He has painted a hay-stack in a field 20 times over and the hay-stacks are all different ; and when this series is exhibited the beholder can follow, led by the magic of his brush, the history of light playing on one and the same object, a dazzling display of luminous atoms, a presenta tion of atmospheric vitality. The shadows, true to nature, are lights where certain tones blue, purple, green or orange — predominate exactly as happens in optic science.
Usually his subjects or motifs are simple; a hay-rick, some slender trees, a cluster of shrubs or group of rocks. No one knows bet ter than he how to place a rock amidst tumul tuous waves, how to construct an enormous cliff or how to give the sensation of a group of pine-trees blown and bent by the wind. Most
unexpected tones play in the foliage and on the ground. On close inspection the beholder sees the canvas striped with orange, red, blue and yellow touches of the brush, but seen from a distance the freshness of the green foliage ap pears as in nature. The eye of the beholder recomposes what the painter's brush has analyzed and dissociated. Monet' is now con sidered one of the greatest of all landscape painters, ranking with Claude Lorrain and J. W. M. Turner. He understands and depicts with equal facility the true character of every soil and the true character of every kind of vegetation. Monet is also able to turn like all great artists from demonstrations of power to displays of tender charm. His studies of the austere rocks of Belle-Isle en mer where heavy waves and blinding spray dash with fury over the granite rocks are unparalleled, while his series of Water-lilies express the melan choly and quiet beauty of sequestered pools where the water is thick with tangled stems and sleepy blossoms. Monet has also painted the woods in autumn where the sunlight plays on tones of bronze and gold and red; chrysan themums, dazzling sun-flowers, tulip-gardens in Holland; sailing boats on sunny rivers; and many portraits and other studies. The series called The Cathedrals> is famous. It consists of 17 studies of the west front of Rouen Cathedral, the towers of which fill the whole space of the picture. The gray stone, worn by time and blackened for centuries, is for 17 times made the theme for the painter's vision. Pale and rosy at sunrise and differently rosy and glow ing at sunset, purple at midday, shrouded in mist or ethereal under the moonlight, the superb facade is reconstructed in the boldest way, yet producing the effect of its thousand details of architectural beauty and exhibiting the most dazzling and poetic atmospheric har monies. Whatever subject he treats Monet creates an aesthetic emotion in the beholder. Consult Duret,