Art Essay: Monet and Margaret Preston

Artists draw inspiration from many factors, one of the main one being culture. Just as we can tell if a painting is abstract or realistic, we can also tell if it is a Chinese or Western or Aboriginal artwork. Some artists apply more than one cultural feature in their artwork to achieve interesting effects; this essay will examine how two landscape artists used this method in their art making. The first artist is Margaret Preston who incorporated Aboriginal features in her art and the second artist is Claude Monet who incorporated Japanese feature into his art.
Claude Monet born on the 14th of November 1840 was a French painter; he was one of the first impressionists and contributed greatly to the growth of impressionism. Impressionism is an art style which uses vibrant colour compared to gloomy brown common in realistic Western painting to . These vibrant colours are painted in small but visible brush stroke that when looked at from far away blends together creating a unique effect.
Monet’s love for Japanese art is clear as his house was decorated with 231 Japanese prints at the time of his death, selected from the best masters. The type of prints that attracted Monet was largely old fashioned, colourful works that do not follow the rules of realism; this style of art has many similar concepts to impressionism but has a very different visual approach which may be why Monet was so interested in them. In fact, amongst the masters that Monet collected art from, one was Hiroshige whom Pissaro described as a great impressionist. As well as collecting them, Monet also drew inspiration from Japanese art, creating ‘Madame Monet’ and the Japanese bridge series.
     
‘Waterlilies pond’ is the name of this version of the Japanese bridge series. Like many Japanese artwork, ‘Waterlilies pond’s main subject is Japanese style arch bridge although he did not include any figures unlike most Asian bridge artwork. Compared to Monet’s other bridge artwork, ‘Waterlilies pond’ has...