Corner of the Apartment by Claude Monet Postcard

A Corner of the Apartment by Claude Monet, oil on canvas 1875, is a painting of an interior domestic scene of a view looking through curtains down a darkened hallway into another room. A well-dressed little boy stands in the middle of the hall, gazing back at the viewer from beneath an ornate chandelier lamp, silhouetted by bright light pouring through the far window. Light from the window carries through brilliant, cool blue reflections in the polished wood floor. Large, luxuriantly leafy potted house plants stand on either side of the picture, framing the view. With contrasts of light and dark with areas of warm and cool color, Monet constructs a tranquil image of domestic French life, with emphasis on light and color. Claude Monet (1840 - 1926) was a founder and chief driving force behind the French Impressionist school of painting. Born in Paris, Monet studied with Eugene Boudin, who taught the basics of oil painting and plein-air (open air) easel painting, and later with painter Charles Gleyre, eventually befriending fellow Impressionists Manet, Renoir, Bazille and others. Rejected by the Paris Salon and other venues of the 19th century academic establishment, the Impressionists painted directly from nature, capturing fleeting moments in time, in bright, broken color and small, rapid brushstrokes. Monet lived and studied in London and Holland, producing many paintings, until the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874, where his painting Impression: Sunrise gained notoriety and earned the group its famous moniker. Following the death of his child and of his first wife Camille, Monet settled in Giverny, where increasing success allowed him to establish a home and studio surrounded by elaborate gardens. Monet painted many landscapes, including garden scenes and his famous Cathedral series, with increasing concerns for light, color and atmosphere, with a concern for color and shapes that in his older age bordered on a kind of abstraction, making him one of the most beloved painters of the modern era.