Claude Monet (1840-1926): Coquelicots, La promenade (Poppies),
1873 (Musée d'Orsay, Paris) - Now one of the world’s most famous paintings, it
conjures up the vibrant atmosphere of a stroll through the fields on a summer’s
day. Monet diluted the contours and constructed a colourful rhythm with blobs
of paint starting from a sprinkling of poppies. The disproportionately large
patches in the foreground indicate the primacy he put on visual impression. A
step towards abstraction had been taken.
In the landscape, a mother and child pair in the foreground
and another in the background are merely a pretext for drawing the diagonal
line that structures the painting. Two separate colour zones are established,
one dominated by red, the other by a bluish green. The young woman with the
sunshade and the child in the foreground are probably the artist’s wife,
Camille, and their son Jean…
