Yuyao XU
2020/25/04
Paris, a city that can almost be equated with “art”, colorful, magnificent. For me studying in Paris, Paris’s rich collection of art galleries, museums and countless exhibitions have made me look forward to and yearn for. I have traveled to Paris many years ago, so for this time I came to Paris, I chose to visit many small art galleries during my leisure time, one of my favorite and most desirable is a small-scale, but exquisite and intriguing museum- Musee de l’Orangerie. The biggest reason I like it is that there is the collection of “water lily” from my favorite painter Monet.
The building of the Museum was not originally designed to display artworks. It was built in 1852 as a winter “greenhouse” of orange trees in the gardens of the Tuileries Palace. It is precisely because of its architectural purpose that the southern facade of the museum is made of glass for daylighting, while the northern side is almost completely closed for shelter from the wind. The main entrance of the Orangerie was designed by the architect Louis Visconti who was responsible for the decoration of the Louvre. The triangular frieze on the top of the porch is filled with plants and ears of corn, representing the function of the site. After 1871, the orangerie was listed as a national property, and it continued to be used for storing orange trees. It was also used as a venue for various activities such as gardening, music, and banquets (Musée de l’Orangerie, 2020a).
Figure 1. L’Orangerie des Tuilerie, vue du sud-est
Source: Viollet (1990)
After 1921, the French government planned to use the orangerie as a display space for artworks. In 1922, Monet decided to donate his representative work “Water Lily”. Since then, Orangerie has become another artistic center in Paris.
Figure 2. Les Nymphéas: Reflets verts
Source: Musée de l’Orangerie (2020b)
Nowadays in the museum, the collection is mainly composed of two parts, one is the giant “Water Lily” series donated by Monet, and the other is the personal collection of the art dealer Paul Guillaume. Judging from the number alone, the collection of Orange Garden is not huge, but the quality and sequence of its collection are also consistent with the temperament of the venue itself. Most people who come to the Orangerie take Monet’s “Water Lilies” as their primary purpose. Eight giant works spread on the curved walls of the two oval exhibition halls, and the skylight pouring down from the glass skylights made people suddenly see the small pond and the Japanese bridge that inspired Monet. The series of works collected in the Orangerie is a series carefully created by Monet until his death at the age of 74 to 86. Unusually large size undoubtedly condensed a lot of his efforts, but until he donated and displayed his works, Monet never signed this group of works. Perhaps this “perfect” works still have something “imperfect” in Monet’s heart and we will never know.
Claude Monet is one of the most important painters in France. He is one of the representatives and founders of Impressionism. Most of the theory and practice of Impressionism are promoted by him. Monet’s life left 500 sketches, more than 2,000 oil paintings and 2,700 letters. The footprints range from Paris avenue to the Mediterranean coast, and travel around the world. Monet is almost synonymous with Impressionism, and his work “Sunrise · Impression” is the origin of the name of Impressionism (O’Neill, 2016). The “Rouen Cathedral” series is his first series. The “Water Lily” series is Monet’s pinnacle of art and the masterpiece of Impressionism.
Figure 3. Impression Sunrise
Source: Monet (1872)
The development of the Impressionists began with the movement of a group of Parisian artists from the 1860s to the 1870s (Wikipedia, 2020). They not only created the Impressionist movement, but also laid the foundation for the succession of modern movements that dominated art in the 20th century (Frosch, 1996). It can be regarded as realism and echoes naturalism to a new stage, but it is also influenced by philosophy and natural science. At the same time, the development of camera technology has affected the field of painting, the realism of camera technology and the abstract of impressionism form a sharp contrast.
The development of Impressionism showed an important stylistic innovation: a feeling of capturing a short impression of a specific scene at a specific moment. At the same time, there have been innovations in the use of colors and themes.
Impressionist painters prefer to describe modern life rather than history. Before Impressionist, description of history was the highest-ranking theme in the academic tradition (Wijnberg and Gemser, 2000). Impressionism is an innovation from three-dimensional space to two-dimensional space, by creating a simple and subtle atmosphere, suggesting the depth of space. In addition, color and light are important factors in Impressionist painting, and they are good at light and shadow experiments and expression techniques. Their use of color is quite delicate, changing the method of drawing shadows and outlines, and there are not very clear shadows in the paintings, nor the prominent or flat-painted outlines. Combined with optical objectivity, the paintings are more abstract and subjective. Just as they might have been to nature, they chose the red or purple that filled the grain pile to express the artist’s feelings about what they saw. These changes are equivalent to the transformation from nature to culture, from simply reflecting the appearance of the world to creating a parallel art world with inner emotions and pure painting (Gibson, 1998).
Figure 4. Impressionism
Source: Dvdbramhall (no date)
Impressionism destroyed the traditional concept of painting, broke through the old ideas of the Renaissance, and brought Western painting into a new field, creating the necessary conditions for the development of fine art in the later period. Impressionist painters represented by Monet led the modernist Western painting has opened up new paths for other artists with unremitting efforts and pursuit.
References
Dvdbramhall (no date) Impressionism [Image]. Available at: https://search.creativecommons.org/photos/95c67e67-183d-45b1-9b7b-f59cdeb43ab9 (Accessed: 20 April 2020).
Frosch, P. (1996) ‘Arts — Making modernism: Picasso and the creation of the market for twentieth-century art by Micheal C. Fitzgerald’, Library Journal, 120(3), p.154.
Gibson, E. (1998) ‘The gallery: Monet caught between centuries’, The Wall Street Journal, 17 November, p.A21.
Monet, C. (1872) Impression sunrise [Image]. Available at: https://www.sohu.com/a/213878458_340436 (Accessed: 20 April 2020).
Musée de l’Orangerie (2020a) L’ensemble de l’Orangerie – Les Nymphéas: Reflets verts [Image]. Available at: https://www.musee-orangerie.fr/fr/article/lensemble-de-lorangerie (Accessed: 18 April 2020).
Musée de l’Orangerie (2020b) Le bâtiment du Second Empire aux Nymphéas. Available at: http://policy-practice.oxfam.org.uk/our-work/gender-justice (Accessed: 18 April 2020).
O’Neill, M. (2016) ‘Monet revolutionized art for the modern citizen stand out: he shone a special light on impressionism’, Investor’s Business Daily, 15 January, p.A03.
Viollet, R. (1990) L’Orangerie des Tuilerie, vue du sud-est [Image]. Available at: http://policy-practice.oxfam.org.uk/our-work/gender-justice (Accessed: 19 April 2020).
Wijnberg, N.M. and Gemser, G. (2000) ‘Adding value to innovation: Impressionism and the transformation of the selection system in visual arts’, Organization Science, 11(3), pp.323- 329.
Wikipedia. (2020) Impressionism. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impressionism (Accessed: 19 April 2020).
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