Book Review:
In the introduction to Monet and the Impressionists for Kids we
start to learn about the artists Claude Monet (particularly his
frame of mind/way of thinking when it came to painting and how he
met the other "rebel artists" (Pierre Auguste Renoir,
Edgar Degas, Mary Cassatt, Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin and
Georges Seurat) featured in this book. These seven artists all took
part in at least one Impressionist exhibition. Other artists we
will learn about are Edouard Manet and Vincent van Gogh. They were
also part of the Impressionist movement. For an overview of the
lives of the seven Impressionist artists and the events that occurred
and even influenced their lives and art you can read the interesting
timeline that precedes the Introduction to the book.
There are activities in each chapter including the chapter on The
Impressionists as a group. I like that the activities encourage
the reader to experiment with different mediums (i.e. combining
magazine pictures with acrylic paints to create something new) like
the artists we are learning about did when they first started as
Impressionists. A couple of the activities included in this book
are recipes. A recipe for Twelfth Night Cake has a connection with
the artist Renoir. Renoir painted The Ball at the Moulin
de la Galette and the restaurant, Moulin de la Galette
was named after a cake they served called Galette des Rois (Twelfth
Night Cake). The other recipe, Seurat Sugar Cookies, can be decorated
in Georges Seurat's style of painting.
In each chapter dedicated to an artist there is a small section
called Art Detective. In it is an outline of some of the characteristics
specific to the art of each artist, for example, "How to Spot
a Monet - Water lilies! Monet spent his last 20 years painting water
lilies.", "How to spot a Cassatt - Girl with red hair!
That's Mary's sister, Lydia - one of her favorite models" and
"How to Spot a Gauguin - Writing on Pictures! Often, the picture's
title is written somewhere on the painting." In each chapter
we also learn how the artists got started as artists, high (and
low) points of their careers, how they met other artists (i.e. Degas
met Manet when Degas was copying a painting at the Louvre), where
they lived and worked during their lifetimes as well as the influences
on their art.
Interesting little bits of trivia such as the highest price for
a painting (a Japanese businessman named Ryoei Saito bought Vincent
van Gogh's Portrait of Dr. Gachet for 82.5 million dollars) and
how Cézanne traded his artwork for food to feed his family
and for tubes of paint because his father cut his allowance appear
throughout the book. This is just a little hint of the fascinating
background behind the work the artists we are learning about.
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