Trees in Winter - View of Bennecourt

Trees in Winter, View of Bennecourt

The artwork I viewed is entitled "Trees in Winter, View of Bennecourt", by Claude Monet. It is a large scaled painting, with dimensions of 32 1/8 x 32 1/8". The painting is done in an impressionist style. The piece was painted in 1887. The medium used was oil paint on canvas.

In this painting, Monet naturalistically depicts a picturesque scene of a landscape. In the central foreground stands a group of thin, grey colored trees in bloom on an early spring morning. This piece was probably painted in the early hours of the day, as indicated by the direction of the rippling black shadows from the base of the trees. The trees stand on a green pasture with blooming pink and yellow flowers under a pastel blue colored sky. A silhouette of a small village almost glows behind the countryside. The natural surroundings appear to be very secluded, even though the village seems so close to the natural area. A balanced symmetry is created by a horizontal axis line, dividing the foreground of the trees with the background of the village. The shadows Monet created from the base of the trees, leads the viewer's eyes towards the village in the background. The overlapping trees on the two dimensional picture plane, creates the illusion of three-dimensional space. Monet also achieves this perspective by painting the village to be less detailed compared with the more distinctively shaped outlined trees.

I think this painting represents Monet's individual style. His use of brushstrokes, varying from thick to thin, creates texture. The thin painterly brushstrokes define the forms of the trees, while the smooth brushstrokes of the leaves, flowers, and grass, create movement; almost as if a light breeze blew through the landscape as the artist painted the scene. The group of trees in the foreground shares a similar color scheme, all endlessly rising into the cloudy sky from the canvas. A separate set of trees to the right foreground contrasts the central group in color, shape, and size. These trees are thinner, and painted with lighter pink and yellow pastels rather than the darker, more saturated hues of the central group. The contrast of the dark colors in the foreground, and lighter colors in the background gives an illusion of spatial depth and an atmospheric perspective. The distant form of the village is blurry and softened in color. If one examined the painting from a distance, a clearer form of a small village and church is revealed.