Genius Meets Genius --- Day 14/359

Walk: yes, Hood in the cold

Distance: 3 miles

JMW Turner, Venice at Sunrise from the Hotel Europa, with Campanile of San Marco, c/ 1840,  watercolor

For safety during the Franco Prussion War (1870-1871) Claude Monet moved to London with his wife and son. It was his first trip to that city and, at its National Gallery, his first encounter with the works of  Britain's genius artist, JMW Turner. He then spent the majority of his art viewing hours communing with it. After the war was settled and the Monets had returned to Paris, Monet made several trips back to London. Possibly for the sole purpose of viewing the Turners once again. Every time a meeting of two pioneer art geniuses.

What Monet saw were inventive ways of mixing of pigments, freeing brushwork, using color and  capturing of mood. Basically, the overall elevation of landscape to a more meaningful level. Beyond that, one can only imagine what Monet was taking in, learning, electrified by. He had just begun to come to many of these techiques on his own in France, and here was a master. Suffice it to say, upon returning to France after his first stay in London, Monet abandoned all subject matter except the play of light in the outdoors.

Claude Monet, Impression, Sunrise, 1872, oil on canvas