Spring by the Seine Claude Monet Cloth Placemat

Spring by the Seine by Claude Monet, oil on canvas 1875, is a landscape painting of pedestrians strolling on the banks of the River Seine in Paris, the warm green leaves of budding trees and puffy white clouds in the pale blue sky of a warm, sunny day reflected in the river. Painted in loose, sketchy, rapidly applied strokes of oil color, the picture captures a relaxed, leisurely moment in the life of the city, with the atmosphere, color and light under the sun of a spring day. Monet creates a harmonious composition of man amidst nature, using simple shapes and careful color harmony to evoke an idyllic scene typical of the outlook of the French Impressionists. 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.