Concorde Square, located in the heart of Paris, has an amazing and in a way bloody history.
This is the place where King Louis and Queen Marie were beheaded after the French Revolution.
The 75-foot-tall Luxor Obelisk was also built on the site in 1836, a gift to France from Egypt.
Along with Concorde is the Tyler’s Garden, which was once the property of the royal palace.
That royal palace has now become the largest museum in the world where most tourists come.
There are also 2 different museums in Tyler’s.
One of them, Jeu de Paume, is dedicated to modern art. While the other, the museum Orangerie, is our topic today.
It was built on the orders of Napoleon III in 1852. And was intended to protect the orange trees from the damage caused by heavy snowfall. This is the reason for its strange name.
Most of Claude Monet’s works of art are in the Marmoten Museum in Paris. But eight of his Water Lily paintings are in ship-sized paintings. The walls of Orange were specially curved for these paintings to make the painting more effective.
Claude was born in Paris in 1840 and began his career there.
However, he spent the last 30 years of his life in a house. Which was in the village of Guerni, in the Normandy area, north of Paris.
The lake next to the house was full of water lilies.
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Claude was fascinated by them. He began to observe them carefully, and for 30 years he painted them on paper of various sizes. He at one point created 250 works of art on Water Lily.
His last 8 paintings of Water Lily were created between 1915 and 1926 and were ship-sized.
In a letter he write to his friend. Claude said: “It has become my obsession to recreate such an attractive surface of water on such a large scale.
I am over 80 years old and at that age this work would be tantamount to forcing myself. But I am compelled. I have to express my ideas by moving on the same paper no matter what the size of the paper.
The highlight of these works of art is the blue sky, white and gray clouds, birds, trees. Collectively the reflection of nature that appears on the surface of the water with all its colors.
At the same time, ducks and other birds are floating on this surface as well as flowers.
The general size painting of Water Lily by Claude at the Marmot Museum is also admirable in itself.
However, the paintings in Orange are unique. Because the eight paintings here are about 7 feet high and 35 feet long.
Four of these paintings depict the rising sun and are located in a section of the gallery.
The other 4 paintings depict the time of sunset and their style is also different.
In them, Claude is seen moving towards abstraction, introducing a simple method that went on to inspire many artists.
Looking at Claude’s last works of art, it is easy to see where the inspiration for later artists, such as Pablo Picasso and Wassily Kandinsky, came from.
Despite the heavy rains these days, long lines of people can be seen outside Orange, waiting to enter.