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Intro To Humanities
Dr. Cremean
Date: 1/28/18
Response To Claude Monet’s “The Sheltered Path”
This art falls in the art movement of Impressionism(34). It is interesting that the birth of
this movement’s name came from one of Monet’s work itself “Impression, soleil levant”
(Impression, Sunrise). True to its nature, it depicts small brush strokes, depicting reality with the
sense of journey. Like many of the impressionist artwork this is set in the outdoors as the artists
painted in the open itself due the ease of the availability of commercial paint during this time.
The depiction of nature in this picture is very life like with very careful individual strokes for
many of the leaves. There are two distinct parts of this painting which is separated by the tree
line. As it sperate the polar contrast there is a slight intermingling of the two which adds to the
‘dreamy’ image.
At the fist sight of this artistic piece it gives a very hazy image almost as if it were
straight out of the painter’s memory accentuated by the dappled rough texture. The oil on
canvas(62) helps gives it various hues of every element of the setting. Although the colors are
low on intensity(47) it instills the mellow mood of the story that it tries to convey. Its
composition(45) lacks sharp edges and almost has a landscape orientation to it but not quite. The
plot of the picture seems to be set during the transition of the fall and winter season as seen by
the mixture of yellow and brown leaves of the trees. The varied intensity of shades on the trees
gives it more mass relative to the other subjects. Placement of the yellow shrubs and the white
clouds makes the whole piece a little asymmetrical(52) making these two areas the focal points
of the whole scene. Use of shifting perspective(55) has been impressively used to show the
person in distance giving it an almost spiritual vibe to it as it allows the viewer to go on a ride
from the shrubs to the person to the cloudy sky along with offering a sense of deep space as it the
road meet the horizon far away and fades. On this journey we go from a dark to light contrast
which evokes a sense of progressive warmth and a ‘feel good’ sensation. The individual strokes
too every element has variety of colors without any hint of mix which is a sharp interchanging
spectrum that catches the eye. Also, the wavy road in the middle gives it a sense of motion. To
add, ‘the walker’ also seems to be in mid motion of the next steps. A very peculiar detail that’s
worth noticing is that Monet leaves a patch of soil with no grass on it on the left side of the
picture which probably means that he was indeed mimicking an actual view of somewhere in
Every artwork serves a purpose and Monet’s ‘The Sheltered Path’ has a positive
philosophical one as it gets the viewer to contemplate about the path of life which gives some
sort of assurance that it’d end on the bright side. Although it may look straightforward this
painting is open to various interpretation which is it’s true beauty. The changing color of trees of
the rows which is portrayed very accurately is a symbol of every stage of life and how we are
mere mortal creatures on this planet upon which we life today but will eventually fade away. In
the end though it is all bright and beautiful like the pearly white sky.
All in all, this revolutionary piece of painting by Monet was monumental in shaping the
path for the generations of Impressionist artists to come. The depth of this marvel lies in its
simplicity. By focusing on the overall picture rather than details with his short and broken brush
strokes, Monet successfully ambience of the whole of being outdoors. It was refreshing for art
lovers of his time to experience such fresh and alive content given that formerly they were all
done in studios. Several of Monet’s friends faced backlash in the beginning but people grew a