La Grenouillere Claude Oscar Monet (1840-1926)

Description of Claude Monet’s painting The Froglet

"Frogmen" was the name given in France to small cafes on the water, which were connected to the shore by light bridges thrown over tiny islands.

As a rule, such places were places where girls of easy virtue sought customers, who arrived with suitors or alone, dressed provocatively and attracted customers with their resounding shouts. Perhaps it was because of these screams that they were nicknamed "frogs" - sitting on the water, making loud noises, the association could be quite unambiguous.

Monet was a famous landscape painter, and even when depicting the frogman he was more interested in nature than in people. Renoir, his friend, painted this place with him, but in his painting much more attention is attracted to people, their poses, from the costumes.

Monet, on the other hand, is captivated by nature, habitually giving it a somewhat greater brilliance than was actually inherent in it.

Thin bridges, platform frogs, covered gazebo, people crowding on them, all outlined in Monet schematically, light, careless brush strokes. Without looking closely, you can not understand who is depicted in the picture, and what they do. Blurred, even the light green wood background.

But the foreground Monet passionate about. Drawn boats gently swaying on the waves, and the waves themselves are painted in such a way that it seems to be heard as they splash against the boards and the shore. They are bright, shiny, reflect the sky, trees and people, gently rippling in the breeze, and they are given the closest attention, as if all the rest of the artist only outlined a quick brush touches, and the foreground shone for a long time, admiring it, worked on it.

This contrast looks quite strange - it’s hard to believe that a person who can depict nature with such a filigree precision could be so indifferent to people that he completely fails to paint them and not give them both time and energy of mind