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Image courtesy of Glagow Museums

Monet was one of the founding members of the Impressionist group.  At their first exhibition in 1874 it was Monet’s painting Impression : Sunrise 1872 that led a critic to give the young artists what was considered to be the derisory name of Impressionists.

 In 1883 Monet and Renoir made a short visit to the South of France.  Inspired by the light and colours of the Mediterranean, Monet decided to return to the South by himself.  He stayed in the Italian seaside resort of Bordighera, but found more inspiration along the coast, finding an open view looking down on the town of Ventimiglia and across to the Alps on the French Italian border.  He wrote of the area that ‘one needs a palette of diamonds and jewels here because of the blues and pinks’.

 Monet conveyed the clear blue sea using horizontal brush strokes of blue and green. The calm surface of the sea contrasts with the vigorously painted foreground of shrubs which frame the view.  Elsewhere Monet captures the coastal landscape and sky almost entirely with blues and pinks.

 Visit Kelvingrove Art Gallery & Museum and see this painting in the French Room in the East Wing.  Compare the colours in this painting to is painting of his French landscape Vetheuil.

 To book a gift voucher daytime tour or private evening tour contact us on 0141 636 6929 or by email info@intermezzo-arts.co.uk

The Glasgow Boys are described as a loose group of up to 25 artists, with a core of about half that number, including James Guthrie, James Paterson, Joseph Crawhall, Arthur Melville and John Lavery. They rejected the highly finished style of the Scottish art establishment in Edinburgh for their more naturalistic west coast approach and examples of their work are currently on show in Kelvingrove.

They are not to be confused wit the Scottish Colourists, who came later, nor the New Glasgow Boys who were a group of artists painting in the 1980s and included Peter Howson, Ken Currie and Steven Campbell.

In the late Victorian period there was a fascination for all things Scottish, due largely to Queen Victoria’s love of Scotland, and paintings of Scottish scenes became fashionable and were hung on the walls of the English middle classes. These paintings however, bore little resemblance to real life in Scotland and began to be viewed by emerging Scottish artists as “chocolate box” and unrealistic.

Thus the Glasgow Boys, youthful and rebellious, began to paint real Scottish life, out of doors, and their rural scenes transformed Scottish art and provided them with an international reputation.

Intermezzo are organising exclusive evening tours of Pioneering Painters: The Glasgow Boys 1880-1900, which runs from April to September 2010

Old Willie - The Village Worthy - James Guthrie (Image courtesy of Glasgow Museums)