Lily Pads and Lotus Painting Art Institute of Chicago
In 1903, when he set out to make a serial of paintings featuring his water lily pond in Giverny, Monet had an unprecedented range of painting materials at his disposal. This was thanks in large function to transformative advances in science and technology in the 19th century that led to the discovery and commercial production of a dazzling array of new pigments.
A palette used by Claude Monet, in the drove of the Musée Marmottan Monet
Bridgeman Images
At the aforementioned fourth dimension, the color-merchant trade expanded due to a growing involvement in outdoor painting among both professional and apprentice artists alike, likewise every bit the production of artists' materials on an industrial scale. Alongside the introduction of new colors, technical innovations in Monet'southward time included the invention of the metal paint tube and the industry of specialized equipment like easels and paint boxes specifically designed for working outdoors.
Claude Monet. Mr. and Mrs. Martin A. Ryerson Drove
Monet took full advantage of the growth of the artist's palette, using newly bachelor pigments to stunning event in works such equally the Art Institute's Water Lilies, completed in 1906. Working in the Conservation and Science labs, we've been fortunate to have the opportunity to examine the painting closely, under the microscope, and to apply a variety of scientific tools to gain insights into the artist'southward materials and technique. Here we explore a selection of the pigments Monet used to create this magnificent painting: their chemistry, history, and the ways in which the artist employed them to limited his personal observations of nature.
Pb White
This popular pigment is one of the most of import and ubiquitous in the history of painting. Information technology has been in use since antiquity and was one of the primeval pigments to be produced synthetically.
Atomic number 82 white was traditionally obtained by exposing atomic number 82 metal to vinegar and other ingredients, such every bit animate being manure, causing a reaction in which a white chaff of basic lead carbonate forms on the atomic number 82 that tin can then be scraped off, dried, and ground into pigment. Past Monet's fourth dimension, withal, the paint was manufactured by more efficient processes. Because of increasing concerns nigh its toxicity, lead white had begun to be phased out by the turn of the 20th century in favor of zinc white. Yet, the atomic number 82-based pigment continued to be the preferred white of many painters due to its warm white tone, skilful covering power, and drying backdrop.
Atomic number 82 white, prized for its warm luminosity, plant its mode into about of Monet's paint mixtures.
Monet made extensive use of pb white in his paintings. When the art dealer René Gimpel visited his studio in 1918, he described "mountains of white snowy peaks" in the eye of Monet'due south palette. The pigment was fundamental to his painting technique and vital to the luminous, loftier-key opacity of his colors. He incorporated it into most of his paint mixtures to adjust the tones and also used information technology for texture, creating thick impasto on the surface of works or building upwardly multiple layers.
French Ultramarine
French ultramarine is the synthetic class of a blue pigment originally extracted from lapis lazuli, a mineral mined from locations in South asia (hence its European etymology, "from across the sea"). Due to its rarity and laborious grooming, the natural paint was often used in before times to highlight of import elements of religious paintings, such as the Virgin Mary's robe. It besides signified the wealth and prestige of the patron who commissioned the work.
By the early 19th century, its chemic makeup had been deciphered, and it was manufactured on a large scale at an affordable cost. The democratization of the pigment quickly led to the loss of its associations with value and rarity. In fact, when Monet painted Water Lilies, the price of French ultramarine oil paint was well-nigh half that of cobalt blueish, which Monet also used in this work.
By combining French ultramarine and cobalt blue with other colors in his palette, Monet achieved a wide range of blue-toned shades.
His application of the two colors exploited their subtle differences in hue: French ultramarine is typically a warmer, carmine-blueish, while cobalt blue appears cooler and more delicate. The water'southward surface has a potent overall blue tonality, merely a close expect at the painting shows that Monet mixed these pigments together and with others on his palette to create a seemingly space array of subtly varying tones.
Red Lakes
These pigments are made from colored organic compounds traditionally extracted from plants, such as madder, or insects, such as cochineal, producing the colorant ruby. In Monet's time, oil paints made with lake pigments were available from color merchants in a wide multifariousness of hues, created by adjusting chemical ingredients used in their manufacture, such as metal salts.
Analysis of Monet'due south paintings at the Art Institute indicates that he used scarlet lakes extensively. Artists at the fourth dimension expressed concern regarding the color fastness of such pigments, and indeed many of them—both natural and synthetic versions—have faded in paintings as we meet them today. But in certain examples, similar Water Lilies, the cherry lakes announced to have retained their vivid colors.
The deep red of the lake paint contrasts with the opaque, orange-scarlet hue of vermilion, adding dimension to one of the flowers.
To create 1 of the red flowers near the upper-left corner of the composition, Monet combined a deep translucent red lake with vermilion, a warmer, opaque red. Without mixing the two pigments together on the palette, he picked them upwardly on his paintbrush and applied them to the canvass in a swirl of color.
Viridian
Equanimous of hydrated chromium oxide, viridian has an intense, transparent greenish color. Its synthesis was related to the discovery in 1797 of the element chromium, a testament to the intimate relationship betwixt the history of pigments and the developing field of chemistry. The expensive pigment was known in France as vert émeraude or vert Pannetier, named, respectively, for its brilliant appearance and for the Paris color maker who first prepared it in 1838.
The characteristic deep green colour of viridian, relatively unadulterated by other colored pigments, can exist seen in the darker touches of the foliage.
In Water Lilies, Monet used viridian lonely and mixed with other pigments, including a synthetic form of the green mineral pigment malachite, to achieve a range of hues in the vegetation. He often used viridian in mixtures with yellow to depict the sunlit leaves of the water lilies, working the hues together, wet-in-moisture, on the canvas.
Cobalt Violets
Cobalt violets are based on diverse salts of the element cobalt. In Monet's time these were truly mod products of the chemic industry, appearing as creative person's pigments only in the second half of the 19th century. For H2o Lilies, Monet used a low-cal-colored type equanimous of cobalt arsenate. Like viridian, it carried a loftier toll tag compared to other pigments. While many of his Impressionist colleagues preferred to mix blood-red and blueish pigments to create a range of more than subtle mauves, Monet oft used this distinctive bright-regal hue in his late work, including 12 paintings in the Art Plant'south collection.
Rather than mixing reds and blues to create purple hues, Monet preferred the brilliant color of cobalt violet.
In H2o Lilies, touches of cobalt violet are evident throughout the water, where he painted the adumbral areas of the pond's surface with more purplish blue tones. But Monet did not shy away from applying strokes of this vibrant majestic hue, seemingly straight out of the tube, to add striking accents to the water-lily flowers.
The purple accents on this water lily lend vibrance and dimension.
One of the nigh extraordinary qualities of H2o Lilies—and one that continues to reveal itself the longer one spends with the painting—is the way that Monet used paint to create a dynamic coaction of colour and texture beyond the surface of his canvas. He congenital up the limerick over the class of several painting sessions, superimposing layer upon layer of brushstrokes, sometimes allowing fourth dimension for earlier paint layers to dry, other times working directly on pinnacle of moisture paint. In some areas, his early brushwork is completely covered by subsequent pigment applications, contributing simply its texture to the final surface. While in others, the open network of brushstrokes provides glimpses of brilliant color from paint layers beneath.
E'er, Monet painted with a carefully calibrated palette of colors that he mixed, layered, and applied to his canvas with painstaking deliberation. Through his meticulous painting process and comprehend of the colorful new products of the chemical industry, he managed to memorably capture the constantly changing effects of light, color, movement, and reflection in his love water garden.
—Kim Muir, inquiry conservator for paintings, and Ken Sutherland, Andrew Westward. Mellon Director of Scientific Research
Sponsors
Pb support for Monet and Chicago is generously contributed by
THE KENNETH C. GRIFFIN CHARITABLE FUND
Atomic number 82 Corporate Sponsors
Major funding is provided by Lesley and Janice Lederer, the Shure Charitable Trust, Richard F. and Christine F. Karger, Mark and Charlene Novak, and Margot Levin Schiff and the Harold Schiff Foundation.
Boosted back up is contributed by the Alice M. LaPert Fund for French Impressionism, Alison R. Barker in honor of Ruth Stark Randolph, the Kemper Educational and Charitable Fund, the Rose L. and Sidney N. Shure Endowment, Gail Elden, and Michelle Lozins.
Members of the Luminary Trust provide almanac leadership support for the museum's operations, including exhibition evolution, conservation and collection care, and educational programming. The Luminary Trust includes an anonymous donor; Neil Bluhm and the Bluhm Family Charitable Foundation; Jay Franke and David Herro; Karen Gray-Krehbiel and John Krehbiel, Jr.; Kenneth C. Griffin; Caryn and King Harris, The Harris Family Foundation; Josef and Margot Lakonishok; Robert M. and Diane five.S. Levy; Ann and Samuel Thousand. Mencoff; Sylvia Neil and Dan Fischel; Anne and Chris Reyes; Cari and Michael J. Sacks; and the Earl and Brenda Shapiro Foundation.
This exhibition is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities.
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- Drove
- Exhibitions
- Artists
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Source: https://www.artic.edu/articles/862/color-chemistry-and-creativity-in-monets-water-lilies
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