Claude Monet's poppy field

When Claude Monet painted this masterpiece he was 33 years old and it was 1873, a year before the famous Impressionist exhibition at the studio of photographer Nadar.

Monet had just returned from a trip to England and moved to Argenteuil, a village on the Seine on the outskirts of Paris.

A bright place that was very popular with the Impressionists and where they painted many pictures.

A field of poppies is very suggestive and pushes a painter to simple solutions, playing on the effect of red touches on a grassy green background.

But Monet never chose the easiest solution, but the right and real one.

The magic of a walk in the fields, this he wanted to convey.

As is his habit, he brings back the landscape, without drawing, but only in touches and areas of color. It masterfully makes the atmosphere a little warm, thanks to the pastel colors and white clouds that leave little room for the sky.

Two figures in the upper left indicate that there is a path there, a road. But his wife and son Jean plunged into the lawn.

On the left on the slope, on the side of the embankment, the poppies and, on the right, the field. The colors are soft, the palette that Monet has chosen today is not in bright tones, because it would have taken away the realism of the painting. Using pastel tones, but with oil colors, he managed to bring us there, by his side, immersed in the field of poppies too.

In a few steps his wife and little Jean will join us.