Figure 12.16 Monet’s Water Lilies in the Orangerie Museum.
green, blue and white convey the atmosphere of sculpted grey stone dissolving in bright colours as the sun moved across the sky or was suddenly lost behind clouds.
Water Lilies
Monet’s last works were giant wall canvases painted during World War I. They were left to the state in remembrance of the war and are displayed in accordance with his wishes, in specially-built oval rooms in the Orangerie Museum in Paris (Fig. 12.16).
Camille Pissarro (1830–1903) Camille Pissarro spent his childhood in the Virgin Islands but was educated in France.
He met Claude Monet and the other Impressionists during their studies in Paris. He was about 10 years older and he encouraged and advised them.
Pissarro’s Career
Pissarro admired Camille Corot in particular. He worked with the Barbizon painters and his early work was accepted in the Salon.
Pissarro absorbed the ideas of light and colour in nature in the new style, but he never forgot the importance of solid structure. He painted in summer and winter, and was the first Impressionist artist to paint snow (Fig. 12.17).
Figure 12.17 The Versailles Road at Louveciennes (The Snow Effect), 1869, by Camille Pissarro, oil on canvas, 38 × 46 cm, Walters Art Museum, Baltimore. Loose brushwork creates the effect of snow and thick blotches of pink, lilac and violet blend with the white.
