Question

The painter San Giorgio Maggiore by Twilight by Claude Monet

Question: When we describe the artist's use of line, we discuss how the lines define the forms of the work. We describe the character and nature of the lines. In this work, describe the artist's imaginative use of line? Are the lines clear or vague? Are they curved or angular?

Question: When there is a central subject, even one which requires a little of imagination, what do we call that type of "form?" Is this an example of combined form? Which is primary?

Question: Describe the line(s) in this work that seem to progress toward the horizon then seem to vanish into a point beyond it.  What is that depth-perceiving technique called?

Answer 1

Answer.

1. Paintings like View of San Giorgio are interesting from the point of view of visual arts and history in that they show the subject, the island and its church, but they also show the path towards abstraction in the artistic movement of Impressionism. In View of San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice by Twilight, Monet paints the island from across the harbor and captures the Mediterranean Sunset using a warm sky, starting blue at the top, working its way from orange, to yellow, to a deep red The colorful sky is reflected in the water below dancing in the shallow waves of the sea. The church and its bell tower are shown silhouetted in dark blues and violets highlighted in dark reds against the water and the sky.

He uses small, thin brush strokes, with an emphasis on the accurate depiction of how light changes the qualities of the subject and thus more than the form sof the objects such as the church, the water and the sky, he combines the use of thick brush strokes with varying hue styles of colours to depict a continuity between the different forms. Thus, rather than discrete and clearly identifiable lines, Monet crafted ‘San Giorgio Maggiore by the Twilight’ as an interruption of strokes of colours that create an illusion of clearly defined lines while in actuality there exists no set of clear lines. Instead, the lines appear bend and angular through the varying intensity of colours which create the effect of movement in the water.