Claude Monet: Grainstack (Sunset)
Claude Monet's Grainstack (Sunset) is the painting I chose from the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. Monet was an impressionist painter in France, and did most of his work at his home at Giverny. Impressionism got its name from a painting that Monet painted, Impression Sunrise. Impressionist paintings are put into a category based on characteristics such as light that draws attention to objects, rough textures, and visual pleasure that the viewer receives upon looking at the paintings. Impressionist paintings are art for arts sake and focus on leisure and nature. These paintings are generally the most well known and popular paintings because of their attractive appearance.
The Grainstack (Sunset) was painted between 1890 and 1891, and is a part of Monet?s first true series paintings. During the time of this series was painted, there was a lot of unrest going on in Europe. Many of the major cities were experiencing industrial growth, and it was causing the people to suffer from a magnitude of social problems.
There were high rates of suicide, and anarchist groups. Over the years to follow, 1889 to 1894, there were at least 600 strikes involving 120,000 workers. There were bombings, raids, and wide spread fear across the country. It was during this time period that Monet was going to establish himself as one of the major painters of the country.
As the viewer looks at this painting, they are taken into a rural scene. You notice first the grainstack as the major object in the painting. As you move around the painting, there are many striking areas of light. The sunset causes a brilliant display of colors around the scene. The sky is fading in the background as the sun sunsets.
There is a small amount of blue still hanging in the sky, and under that a large portion of a yellow hue from the sun setting. As the suns sets further it cause a pink color above the land. The sunset has cause the grainstacks color to darken. You can see that the light left in the scene is on the other side of the stack. There is a shadow cast of the back side, making the stacks top dark brown, and the bottom a dark red.
The rural scene in the Grainstack (Sunset), as well as the other grainstacks in his series paintings, all basically share many of the same characteristics. The haystacks are never overwhelmed by light. As in the Grainstac...
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...ainting and finding out what is behind it makes the work a lot more interesting. Monet?s grainstacks have not only taught me about him as a painter and why he painted as he did, but also about France and what was going on during this period. His works are a beautiful representation of what life was like, and what Monet was experiencing right in his own backyard.
Bibliography
Hayes Tucker, Paul. Monet in the 90?s: Series Paintings. Boston Museum of Fine Arts; New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989.
Hayes Tucker, Paul. Monet in the Twentieth Century. Boston Museum of Fine Arts; New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998.
Frascina, Francis. Modernity and Modernism: French Painting in the Nineteenth Century. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993.
Gerdts, William H. Monet?s Giverny: An Impressionists Colony. New York: Abbeville Press, 1993.
Copplestone, Trewin. The History and Techniques of the Great Masters: Monet. New Jersey: Chartwell Books, 1987.
Tomkins, Calvin. ?Monet?s Illusion.? Vanity Fair. July 1995, Vol. 58 Issue 7: pg. 96-102.
Hurwitz, Laurie S. ?The Well Planned Spontaneity of Claude Monet.? American Artist. March 1996, Vol. 60 Issue 644: pg. 56-64.
Secondly, the demand for cotton grew tremendously as cotton became an important raw material for the then developing cotton industries in the North and Britain. The growing of cotton revived the Southern economy and the plantations spread across the south, and by 1850 the southern U.S produced more than 80% of cotton all over the world. As this cotton based economy of the south grew so did the slave labor to work in these large scale plantations since they were more labor-intensive...
Barasch, Moshe. Modern Theories of Art, 1 From Winckelmann to Baudelaire. New York and London: New York University Press, 1990. Print.
...re situations, from a razed city to devastated citizens. The calamity caused the city to crumble and the government to pay extreme amounts of money. In addition, residents of San Francisco and other surrounding areas suffered the consequences. Thousands died, but even more faced the encumbrance of homelessness. The earthquake caused fires that went on for as long as three days. Nevertheless, San Francisco transformed its ashes into a beautiful city full of fascinating buildings in a matter of weeks. 1906, a year of a significant natural disaster, also became a year that spawned knowledge in the field of seismology. No one will ever forget the appalling chain of events that occurred during the early twentieth century. The San Francisco Earthquake of 1906 has not only educated scientists, but it has also made San Francisco the jewel of the West Coast that it is today.
Small Country Farm at Bordighera was probably painted in March and represents his finest achievement there. Years later Monet mentioned it with one other painting of the sojourn as a work with which he was especially satisfied. In it, Monet used remarkably varied brushwork to create a wide range of optical effects and to organize his pictorial space as the viewer's eye is carried from the thick, bushy vegetation of the foreground to the hazy mountain peaks of the distance. Above all, the painting is remarkable for its bold handling of color and rainbowlike palette, which point away from the years of classic Impressionism to the color-saturated paintings of Monet's final decades in Giverny.
From the piece of artwork “Rain at the Auvers”. I can see roofs of houses that are tucked into a valley, trees hiding the town, black birds, clouds upon the horizon, hills, vegetation, a dark stormy sky and rain.
Cotton was an extremely labor-intensive crop that requires hours of manual labor to harvest and many more in preparation for spinning. Many Americans looked for ways to improve this process and make it faster, however it was not until the American Industrial Revolution came about that great steps were made in this process. When the American Industrial Revolution hit, it brought about a major change and was arguably one of the greatest factors in the modernization of the United States. Along with this Industrial Revolution came a great invention in the world of cotton which many historians argue sparked the revolution itself. Eli Whitney brought a revolution to cotton production when he invented the cotton gin. This machine quickly separated the cotton seeds from the cotton and allowed it to be processed at rates up to twenty times faster than before. The cotton production in the U.S. and its annual yield had been relatively low before the invention of the cotton gin, but after its introduction annual cotton production soared to all-time highs. Along with the cotton gin, large mills and metal tools vastly enhanced the production of cotton in the 1800’s. The production of cotton was primarily centered on its export to Europe and these new technologies produced a new age of production in New England and created a vast domestic market for southern cotton farmers. This European cotton trade produced a strong market that supported many southern states. Europeans were the primary source in turning this raw cotton into textiles through the African cotton trade. “Europeans also learned that the African trade could be integrated within a wider space of exchange that encompassed the entire Atlantic. This was called ‘triangular trade’ in which raw materials (cotton) were traded from the Americas to Europe, where they served to manufacture and print cotton textiles. These textiles were then in turn sold on international
...th a nearly challenging obstacle. They produced too little cotton to be able to cover the costs of shipping it to a processing plant, most likely in the North or England, their primary consumers. Within ten years, cotton became the main crop in the south. In 1790, before the invention of the cotton gin, about 3000 bales of cotton were produced in the United States. Ten years later 100000 thousands bales were produced.
Frankenstein and his abominable creation are two characters inexorably linked with eachother, as father and son, as inventor and invention, and even as reflections of eachother. Their conflict deals with themes of the morality of science and the fears of child birth, and their characters are drawn from a wealth of experience and reading. Shelley’s doppleganger of mankind is like a twisted vision of reality; based in some sense on reality but wildly taken out of proportion, the monster is so inhuman that it cannot reconcile itself with its master or the world of humanity. Its tragic story serves as a warning of what mankind could become as well as a reflection of Shelley’s own personal demons, and her creation has changed the face of literature.
The invention of the cotton gin made growing cotton practical, and cotton began dominating the growing fields. Cotton was a crop that could be grown almost anywhere because it seemed to need only the land to grow in. Land that was once left empty because of poor growth capabilities was planted in the lucrative crop of cotton. Growing cotton allowed farmers to grow crops in fields that previously had to rest for a season. The southern farmers were able to realize a profit thanks to Eli’s labor and time saving machine.
In the late 1700’s the slave population in the United States had decreased. Before the invention of the cotton gin the South, which could only make money by farming, was loosing money because it didn’t have a major crop to export to England and the North besides tobacco and rice. However, these crops could be grown elsewhere. Cotton was the key because it couldn’t be grown in large amounts in other places, but only one type of cotton that could be cleaned easily. This was long-staple cotton. Another problem arose; long-staple cotton only could be grown along the coast. There was another strain of cotton that until then could not be cleaned easily so it wasn’t worth growing. The cotton gin was the solution to this problem. With the invention of the cotton gin short stemmed cotton could be cleaned easily making cotton a valued export and it could be grown anywhere in the south. The era of the “Cotton Kingdom” began with this invention leading into an explosion in the necessity of slaves.
Van Gogh felt inspired by this depiction of human that gave a sentimental quality and began to draw replicas of Millet’s work, he held his work in the highest regard, even to the point of holiness.
Due to the fact that cotton had to be separated by hand, it was costly commodity. One person could barely separate a pound by hand over the course of a day. It was not until 1793, when Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin that production of cotton soared. A worker on a plantation could now produce fifty pounds of cotton a day, instead of just one.
Claude Monet is often considered one of greatest most dedicated of the Impressionist painters. His aim was to catch the light and atmosphere, something that was scarcely done before. He enjoyed painting outdoors and developed a free and spontaneous painting technique. His brushwork is remarkably flexible and varied. He often changed his technique, sometimes broad and sweeping other times dappled and sparkling.
Barnett, Peter. “The French Revolution in Art”. ArtId, January 7th 2009. Web. 5th May 2013.
An important area for the development of a country is definitely the health sector, but in countries like Nepal where the Human Development Index(WHO, 2012) is only 0.463, a lot of people do not even receive any health provisions. The ethnic groups such as Dalit and Janajati in Nepal, are much affected by the unequal access and use of state- provided public health resources, facilities and services. In many cases, even among all these, it is the women and children (especially girls) who suffer the most as they are discriminated based on gender, caste and ethnicity. That being said, through this research I will be focusing on the health issues among the women in Nepal and how various factors such as the gender inequality, caste system, and traditional beliefs contribute to affect their health.