About Claude Monet's Champ d'avoine.
Claude Monet (French, 1840–1926).
Champ d’avoine (Oat Field), 1890
Oil on canvas
26 x 36 7/16 in. (66 x 92.6 cm)
Gift of Michael A. Singer
1999.6
NOT ON VIEW
French painter Claude Monet expressed the immediacy of experience by underscoring the fleeting nature of visual phenomena. During the 1860s and 1870s, Monet developed his technique for rendering atmospheric lighting effects consisting of broken, rhythmic brushwork, thus laying the foundations of the Impressionist movement. In the 1890s, he began a decade dedicated to the almost exclusive depiction of the landscape in the vicinity of Giverny, the French village that the Monet family had made its home since 1883.
Painted in 1890, Champ d’avoine reveals Monet’s characteristic refined color harmonies and spontaneous brushwork as well as his keen interest in the effects of changing light on one’s perception of color and form.
In the summer of 1890, Monet began work on a series of six canvases depicting the fields of hay, oats, and poppies around his Giverny home. The series represents two distinct views of the surrounding landscape with three paintings in each group. Together, the six paintings reveal a concern with overall atmospheric effects as well as with exploring the decorative, tapestry-like possibilities of landscape painting. Champ d’avoine depicts a vibrant landscape surrounding Monet’s Giverny home and was one of the first subjects to be treated by the artist as a series. It was painted in late summer when the field of oats and poppies was at its peak of maturity. The landscape unfolds into the far distance, the sky dominated by soft clouds that give way to a blue haze at the horizon.
Dig deeper:
Sunshine state standards activity guide for K-12 children by the Harn Museum of Art - http://harn.ufl.edu/k-12
