Why This Monet Painting Means So Much To Me
A personal journey to the Paris of the Impressionist master
It was on a sunny, blustery day in spring when I visited Paris for the first time. I was 19-years-old and not long out of college. At that time in my life, my intention was to go to university to study art and become a painter, but I was having doubts over the matter. I didn’t know if it was the right path for me, so I decided to put things on hold for a year and see what else the world had to offer.
So I got myself a job in a supermarket, and after several months of stacking potatoes and cabbages along the vegetable aisle, I had saved up enough money to leave my home town and go travelling for a few months. Paris was my first stop.
One of the preoccupations I had was to visit the territory of the Impressionist painters. I had become interested in the history of art after taking a course in the subject in preparation for art college.
So as many pilgrims to Paris do, I ventured up to Montmartre where a number of Impressionists made their home. Here, I found narrow streets filled with cafes and bars, an almost too-perfect version of bohemian Paris. There were also dozens of artists sat at easels, all of them painting the same brightly coloured picture-postcard canvases — in the hope of catching a…
