Talk:The Magpie (Monet)

Notes

Background

• Poverty
  • Escape from creditors. The reason why paintings from this period are few and far in between.
• Depression
  • Suicide attempt; real or invented?
• Influence of Manet in The Luncheon
• Painting said to be one of 68 paintings offered to the government of France as part of the Caillebotte bequest in 1894, of which 16 were paintings by Monet. The government only took 8/16; it is unclear if The Magpie was part of the 8 in the French collection, however the provenance tends to imply that it was not. More sources needed. Ideally, I would like to have a date showing when Caillebotte acquired the painting and its provenance between 1894 and 1918.

Analysis

• Add high-key palette
  • Add colors, white snow composed of yellow and pinks
• True en plein air or hybrid studio? House (1988) questions whether Monet could paint in deep snow; however, The Cart news coverage documents such a case. Anecdotes of Monet digging a trench
  • Add more on this
• Morning or afternoon?
  • This is annoying. Some sources say dawn to morning, others say early to late afternoon.
• Was it started in 1868 and completed in 1869, or both in 1869 alone?
  • Need to mention why the date range narrowed since 1986. (Wildenstein, letters, etc.)
• Symbolism of the magpie.
• Musée d'Orsay commentary
• Where exactly was this scene?
  • Unknown location or outskirts of Honfleur?
    • See Coe (1957).
      • Done.
• How does it compare with other snowscenes by Monet?
  • See Monet in Normandy (2006)
  • See Impressionist and post-impressionist masterpieces at the Musée d'Orsay (1989)
• How does it compare with other snowscenes by other artists?
  • See The art of the Impressionists (1988)

Colored shadows

• Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841–1919) previously used colored blue shadows in Lise with Parasol (1867). (Grimme & Wolf, 2007)

Later influences/other works

• Monet would later come to admire Joseph Mallord William Turner's mastery of the snow effect after seeing his work in London with Pissarro in 1870. Monet cited Rain, Steam and Speed as one of the few paintings that was influential. Turner was painting in the impressionist style 40 years before Monet and was heavily influenced by Goethe.
  • What is interesting about this, is the idea that The Magpie was painted before Monet saw Turner's work, even though some source theorize that the work was completed sometime later, from 1870-1872.
    • Seems irrelevant now that we know Monet was an admirer of Eugène Delacroix during the late 1850s and early 1860s. This explains the influence of Chevreul, however, how can it be that Georges Roque (1996) does not mention Delacroix? Something is wrong here.
      • See Backhaus et al. (1998).

Image issues

Resolved

• Color of current image is very different (bluish cast) from the original image (see hi-res in external links)
  • Fixed as of April 2013. Viriditas (talk) 02:09, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

Other works

Resolved

Monet began to cultivate an interest in Jongkind's perspective on the changing conditions of the landscape. From Jongkind, Monet learned to substitute optical color for local color.

Rewald's The History of Impressionism mentions that there were two early paintings influenced by Jongkind's approach described above: Road near Honfleur in Winter (1865) and Road near Honfleur (1866). Viriditas (talk) 06:50, 9 October 2012 (UTC)

Citation issues

 Doing...

I cannot provide an exact citation page number for Meynell 1993 (out of seven pages) because the online copy that I have from EBSCO is provided as an HTML copy, on a single page with no page numbers. While I appreciate the access, this makes citing a page number impossible. Viriditas (talk) 11:08, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

It occurs to me that I should be able to cite the paragraph number instead. I don't know why I didn't think of this before, but I believe I've seen this done Chicago-style. Viriditas (talk) 02:20, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

copyedit

Resolved

Edited this. Looks good, except that many of the short author/year footnotes aren't backed up by full references at the bottom. This needs to be fixed. Lfstevens (talk) 16:41, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

I think they are backed up, but that it may not be clear. Can you point to some examples that aren't? Viriditas (talk) 11:44, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

Update: this problem has been identified by Kürbis in the GA1 review. Viriditas (talk) 23:02, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

Note: I do not like the current referencing style. I would prefer if all of the citations were conglomerated. Viriditas (talk) 02:22, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

File:Claude Monet - The Magpie - Google Art Project.jpg to appear as POTD soon

Hello! This is a note to let the editors of this article know that File:Claude Monet - The Magpie - Google Art Project.jpg will be appearing as picture of the day on February 7, 2017. You can view and edit the POTD blurb at Template:POTD/2017-02-07. If this article needs any attention or maintenance, it would be preferable if that could be done before its appearance on the Main Page so Wikipedia doesn't look bad. :) Thanks! —howcheng {chat} 17:31, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

Picture of the day

The Magpie, by the French Impressionist Claude Monet, is one of approximately 140 snowscapes produced by Monet and is his largest winter painting. It depicts a solitary black-and-white magpie perched on a gate formed in a wattle fence, as the light of the sun shines upon freshly fallen snow creating blue shadows.Painting: Claude Monet