Claude Monet's Poppies, Near Argenteuil
In the countryside, a vivid splash of poppies seems to move in a gentle breeze. Monet has made the red poppies and the green field effectively equiluminant. The position of the poppies seems uncertain. To many viewers, they appear to quiver.
| Poppies, Near Argenteuil, Claude Monet, 1873. |
If you remove the color, most of the poppies cannot be seen in the field. The poppies and field are equiluminant. As has been noted, the Impressionists painted not a landscape but the impression of a landscape. Nothing here is painted exactly; rather, everything is suggested. Monet unforgettably evokes a mood by choosing these shades of green and red. If he painted flowers of another color, the hillside would be stagnant.