Claude Monet
You know that we love the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, right? Now, partly online you can visit the Here to Stay: A decade of remarkable acquisitions and their stories exhibition. These are not van Gogh masterpieces only; the museum has a vast collection of artworks created by other artists.
Aside from the artworks themselves, the stories behind the acquisitions play a central role in the exhibition. Furthermore, a varied group of people, from storage facility staff to Amsterdam residents, introduce their personal stories accompanying their favorite acquisitions from the past decade. We hope you will find it interesting. Today we present a poem written by Yassin Tallih, citizen of Amsterdam. Enjoy!
As it should be.
In this painting I see the Netherlands.
The Netherlands as it should be.
Different colours and stories.
Alongside each other, and intermingled.
Individually yet together.
We, the Dutch, can take this as an example.
All of us together next to the windmill.
With the wind in our sails if things go well and facing the wind if necessary.
But always together.
As it should be.
Claude Monet was enormously impressed by the brightly colored bulb fields of Holland. In the early spring of 1886, he wrote to a friend that the sight was "impossible to convey with our poor colors." Monet had been to the Netherlands before, but was painting the sea of flowers for the first time.
Back in Paris, he sold the painting via art dealers Boussod, Valadon & Cie, where Theo van Gogh worked. It’s quite possible that his brother Vincent saw it there. Vincent gradually came to admire Monet’s swift brushstrokes and bright colors.
If you would like to learn more about Monet's visits in Holland, please check our Mega Impressionist Course here. : )
P.S. Did you know that Claude Monet was also a master of caricature drawings? Find out more about them here.