Giverny
Video 5 of 14 from Brad and Sue's France 2015 vacation.
A film by Brad Imsdahl
Clair de lune and Reverie: Written by Claude Debussy - Performed by Brad Imsdahl

Giverny is a small French village in Normandy located on the River Seine about 50 miles northwest of Paris. The town is best known as the location of Claude Monet’s famous gardens and home.

Claude Monet was born on November 14th, 1840 and died on December 5th 1926 at the age of 86. He was the founder of French Impressionist painting. The term Impressionism comes from his painting, Impression, Sunrise, which was first exhibited in 1874 in Paris. He moved to Giverny in 1883 where he purchased a house and property to begin a vast landscaping project which included lily ponds that would become the subjects of his best-known works.

Monet and other impressionist artists in Paris were met with rejection from the traditional conservative art establishment. Rather than painting a picture of something like it is a photograph, impressionism is about the understanding of the effects of light on the local color of objects, and the effects of the juxtaposition of colors with each other. The artist is focused on recreating the effects of light and reflections, thinking in terms of colors and shapes rather than scenes and objects.

In 2004, his painting London, the Parliament, Effects of Sun in the Fog, sold for $20.1 million. In 2008, his painting of a railway bridge sold for $41.4 million. And just a few weeks later, a painting from the water lilies series, sold for a record $80,451,178, representing one of the top 20 highest prices paid for a painting at the time.

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