Video: Claude Monet at the Musée d'Orsay

Here's the third in my series of posts about the Musée d'Orsay in Paris. Today I've got a video of the paintings of Claude Monet. This is the link to Claude Monet Paintings in the Musée d'Orsay on my You Tube channel (HD version) - you'll find you recognise an awful lot of them. The sound of the museum takes me right back to when I was there four weeks ago.

Yet again, as you can see from the video, it was shot in a very crowded room by an individual (me!) who was still getting used to her new tiny hand held camcorder. See yesterday's post about my video of Vincent Van Gogh's paintings as to the reasons why it is possible to photograph, shoot video and copy paintings in the Musée d'Orsay.

The Lunch: decorative panel
by Claude Monet (1844-1926)
photo copyright Katherine Tyrrell

Paintings in the video

Here's a list of some of the major paintings by Monet which are in the video and links to the website. The English title has the link the description of the painting in English and the French title has the link to an image of the painting. Following these is either a small extract from the description on the website (in italics) or a comment by me.

• Wind Effect, Series of The Poplars - Effet de vent, série des peupliers en 1891 part of a series of over twenty paintings of the trees planted by the swamp in Limetz, on the left bank of the river Epte, about two kilometres upriver from Giverny.
• Villas at Bordighera - Les villas à Bordighera - painted in his studio in Giverny, from a smaller painting executed on the site (Villas at Bordighera, The Santa Barbara Museum of Art).
• The Coalmen (aka Men Unloading Coal) - Les charbonniers (aka Les déchargeurs de charbon) - There is a clear analogy with the Japanese prints that Monet collected, views of Edo by Hokusai and Hiroshige.
• The Lunch: decorative panel - Le déjeuner : panneau décoratif - I was very surprised at how dull the pigments in this paintings are. It's as if he's been using fugitive paints which have lost their impact over time. It was originally produced as a decorative panel and maybe he used different paints?
• The Saint-Lazare Station - La gare Saint-Lazare - what prevails here is really the effects of colour and light rather than a concern for describing machines or travellers in detail. Certain zones, true pieces of pure painting, achieve an almost abstract vision.
• The Rue Montorgueil in Paris. Celebration of June 30, 1878 - La rue Montorgueil, à Paris. Fête du 30 juin 1878 - The impressionist technique, with its multitude of small strokes of colour, suggests the animation of the crowd and the wavering of flags.
• London, Houses of Parliament. The Sun Shining through the Fog - Londres, le Parlement. Trouée de soleil dans le brouillard - Sky and water are painted in the same tones, dominated by mauve and orange. The brushstrokes are systematically broken into thousands of coloured patches to render the density of the atmosphere and the mist.
• Blue Water Lilies - Nymphéas bleus - Never was the artist's brushstroke so free, so detached from the description of forms. A close-up view of the canvas gives a feeling of total abstraction, because the brushstrokes are stronger than the identification of the plants or their reflections.
• Woman with a parasol turning to the left - Essai de figure en plein-air : Femme à l'ombrelle tournée vers la gauche
  

(Note: I'll be adding more later - got to run!)

Photographs of Monet paintings

You can also see a number of my photgraphs of these paintings by Monet (and others by Monet) in my Flickr set of the paintings in the Musée d'Orsay. On the right you can see ones that I didn't video.

Monet's version of Dejeuner sur l'Herbe (Luncheon on the Grass)
(this is the account of why it's like this)
photo copyright Katherine Tyrrell

Advice for a novice shooting videos

As regular readers may know, I've come late to digital camcorders - which I'm quite pleased about as mine is very small, very light and slips in my pocket!

People are writing to me and sending me jolly good advice about shooting videos - and I'd like to thank everybody who is doing that. Keep it coming. I will pan more slowly and use stop frames before zooming!

I'm also especially interested in ways of reducing shake and am now trying to find out whether they do shoulder-pods or body-brace for the new tiny camcorders.

Any more suggestions please let me know - and I'll do a composite post at some point about the good advice I'm being given.

Links:

• Making A Mark - The Musée d'Orsay
• Making A Mark - Video: Vincent van Gogh at the Musée d'Orsay
• Musée d'Orsay - Resources for Art Lovers
• Claude Monet - Resources for Art Lovers
• Monet's Series Paintings - Rouen Cathedral