The Gorge at Varengeville Late Afternoon was painted in the year 1897. It is part of a series of landscape paintings that Monet had done in his later years. During this period, Monet's health had been taking a hit gradually but he continued to paint phenomenal pieces of art.
To this day, Monet's paintings of his later years are still held in high regard and have continued to inspire influence the careers of many artists. The Gorge at Varengeville Late Afternoon painting is also synonymous with Monet's impressionist style of painting.
His heavy brushstrokes are quite evident in this painting with the resultant rough texture for an oil on canvas painting.
The Gorge at Varengeville Late Afternoon was still a painting of the impressionist genre. It was a landscape painting, an orientation that Monet had found some passion in his later years. The technique of the painting still involves Monet's characteristic heavy brushstrokes which had been the reason for launching impressionist and unconventional style of painting.
The painting pays close attention to the images depicted. It contains images of a gorge, a bungalow and the sea in a late afternoon. This painting was a perfect setting for Monet, who had always had a lot of passion for painting color and contrast. The fact that the painting's setting involves a late afternoon with a gorge on a seafront, gives Monet a perfect opportunity to play around with color, light, and contrast. Impressionism shows clear contrasts to the earlier Renaissance classics, such as Masaccio's Holy Trinity, Botticelli's The Birth of Venus and Bosch's The Garden of Earthly Delights.
Throughout his painting career, Monet concentrated largely on impressionist painting. During his early years as a painter, his style failed to find favor among people as they had been discredited and rejected by exhibitions as a result of his unconventional style. Monet teamed up with other like-minded painters to launch, popularize and advance impressionist painting.
Among this painters were; Camille Pissarro, Alfred Sisley and Auguste Renoir. They held their first exhibition in the year 1874. Through this exhibition, Monet was able to do and a lot of paintings, exhibit them and getting recognition far and beyond. During his studies as a young a painter, he drew inspiration from painters such as Joseph Mallord William Turner and John Constable.
There a lot of Monet's paintings that have had a lot of popularity in the painting world even to date. Among them include:
The Waterlilies series - Monet painted the series between 1889 and 1899. The series consisted of approximately 250 pieces of paintings.
The paintings depicted images of water lilies at different times of the day, therefore exhibiting the change in color and contrast. This series was quite popular as one of the painting fetched 80 million dollars in an auction in 2008. An amazing fact about this paintings is that Monet did them at a time when his eyesight was developing problems but they turned out phenomenal.
The haystacks series - This is another one of Monet's quite popular painting works. It is a series of 25 pieces of painting canvases that he painted between 1890 and 1891. The paintings depicted images of haystacks that were at were around his home at that time.
His home in Giverny, France was surrounded by fields of haystacks. At the time he had found quite a comfortable life at Giverny, France. The series is quite notable since Mone's showcased the prowess of painting the same setting repeatedly at different times of the day to depicts the district appearances in color and contrast.
