monet Japanese Bridge fine-art painting - one of his best

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by: olgarahmaninof
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Date: Mon, 28 Feb 2011 Time: 3:55 AM
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Still, a complete European mode garden with European trees and blooms , two attached ponds and 100s of water lilies might appear a bit out of place. As a matter of fact, the only localised feature of the garden would look to be the Japanese bridge crossing over the link between the two pools. A close look at the bridge, set between these pools and environed by water lilies, might even make that realized a bit out of place. There is something eerily intimate about the background, and even with bridge and all it is not something related Japan. Rather, the idea of something French springs to mind. Because has not this exact scene appeared in European art? As a matter of fact, was there not some of the artist that painted this exceptional background time and again?.

And so it dawns to you. The Japanese bridge was painted by Monet, French impressionist, in his garden in Giverny, most famously in the painting Water Lily Pond from 1899. And the water lilies in the ponds were similarly painted by him endlessly. Merely, naturally, Giverny is in France and this is most certainly Japan. Something is still not nearly right.


The explanation for this Monet garden in Japan really goes all the way back to Monet himself. Large numbers of Impressionists, and most emphatically Monet, were captured by Japanese art. He participated in the supposed Japanese dinner parties where Japanese art was talked about, he was around some Japanese creative persons, he even portrayed his wife Camille dressed up in a Japanese kit and he had about two hundred Japanese prints ornamenting his property in Giverny. In Japanese art, Claude Monet saw a manifestation of several of his own positions on art. The way Japanese art, especially the prints, focus on simpleness i.e. that from factors completely polished they draw the best esthetics. The idea of simplified movement ; the way a simple print reveals new details the more you discover it ;.
the way beauty is in the essential factors, rather than in the quantity colourings and decorations. Monet himself described with these positions and positions towards fine art. Meantime his own Japanese art collection also inspired him and assisted him see there are more easy methods to do landscape paintings. This collection also introduced him to Japanese bridge design.


Still, he did not set up the bridge simply from his aesthetic requirements. Monet planned his garden so that one pool would be in the shade, one would be in the sun. Withal, with a curved Japanese bridge sweeping the narrow point between the two ponds, the rays of the sun passes beneath the bridge and light up the shaded region, where the water lilies are in the shades. This creates a shade and light impression, and it was the reflection and examination of this that was at the heart of his water lily paintings in Giverny.

The Japanese, in turn, also reacted to Monet's style, that in more and more ways reminded them of their own. That's why Claude Monet still today is so popular in Japan, and because of this it was decided in that to mark the millennium, a copy of Monet's garden would be set up in Japanese Islands. More then 200.000 visitants came to see Monet's garden in Japan on the first year only, and they are still coming. So whether in Giverny or in Kitagava, you can be signed with the view Monet shared as he painted his celebrated Japanese bridge, sweeping over the water lily pond in his garden.

About the Author

the author is the holder of Claude Monet gallery, and an art expert.
more art resorces can be found on this art site.