Boats at rest, at Petit-Gennevilliers 1872

Curator: This is Claude Monet's "Boats at Rest, at Petit-Gennevilliers," painted in 1872. What strikes you most about it? Editor: Oh, immediately? The calm. It’s such a quietly reflective scene. The gentle blues and greens, the way everything shimmers. It’s like a memory surfacing. Curator: Absolutely. Monet painted this during a period when he was living in Argenteuil, a suburb of Paris, and became fascinated with capturing the effects of light and atmosphere on the Seine. It’s a fantastic example of his move towards Impressionism. We see here a number of vessels, boats and sailboats, beached around a bit of the riverside in what was then, in the Parisian suburbs, a recreational space that Monet came back to time and again to seek this particular sense of leisure. Editor: It really comes through. You feel like you could step right into that peaceful scene. He wasn't just painting boats, was he? He's painting the feeling of the river, the air...almost an emotion, to the experience of spending a relaxed afternoon in Petit-Gennevilliers. I’d wager the canvas even smells faintly of fresh river air. Curator: Precisely. He's using color and brushstrokes to convey not just what he *sees*, but what he *feels*. The brushwork itself is so loose, almost gestural, and particularly if one keeps in mind what Academic art of the moment prized – it would not be Monet. Editor: The way the reflections ripple on the water...it’s so free and almost unfinished compared to the tightly controlled landscapes of the old masters. That break, though, the shattering of that established convention is so very liberating, right? Curator: It absolutely is, and we might think too about how those broken waves that the reflections generate are maybe related too to this rising social class, of middle income earners, small industrialists and those with leisure time… Petit-Gennevilliers, in this image, represents not simply light or the surface of the water, but also all these other, deeper things as well. It’s light in a particular moment in modern life! Editor: Knowing that just adds another layer to the viewing. It’s no longer just a pretty scene. The composition really brings the whole concept home – the way those boats rest so heavily in the mid-ground, with those little factory or residential buildings placed into the background—I would suppose that to contemporary eyes this must’ve come off as revolutionary, since those sorts of “urban-creep” shots hadn’t previously been seen as material appropriate for consideration into “Art” proper. And, beyond that, what else, for you, still resonates in Monet’s “Boats”? Curator: Monet really manages to crystallizes so much in the paint itself. What a fantastic encounter! Editor: Agreed. I'll never look at a calm river the same way again!