Drama 16 Stage Lighting

Palazzo da Mula at Venice by Claude Monet (1908)

Photo of painting found on wikiart here.

Gentle.

The warm yellows, ambers, and just the slightest touch of pinks gently illuminate the palazzo from hardly any vertical angle, while angled steeply to the left horizontally. Although much of this painting is in cool blues and greens, the lighter greys and warm colors rendering the light have such a light, delicate, and quite gentle touch – serenely reflecting itself on the water in the foreground. This feels like early morning, maybe just prior to dawn. It feels somewhat melancholy, but overall contemplative and mostly simply content. These more peaceful and serene feelings tend to tag along somehow with something that is gentle, or gently depicting a particular scene. I ended up looking through quite a lot of impressionist paintings actually, as it felt like every photo I found depicted a subject that was gentle rather than presenting gentle lighting.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rouen_Cathedral_(Monet)>

Theme: Dealers Choice

Monet’s Rouen Cathedral, West Facade.  I have so many feelings about these paintings.  They are two of more than thirty paintings of the same church, Rouen Cathedral, all under different levels of light varied by time of day and season.  These two hang next to each other in the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC, and I saw them when I was there over spring break.  They play of light across the levels and details of the gothic architecture is stunning, and you see how the change in daylight will obscure or wash out some sections, and create new shapes in others.  Monet perfectly captures the light in these paintings, creating so much with the quick, rough movements of his brush.  You can see the physical paint caking up in sections, the light literally built off of the arches and columns.  I had seen plenty of Monet’s works before, and had always loved his water lilies, but had never seen these before and was absolutely spellbound.  I returned to the National Gallery specifically to return to the impressionists and to this pair a couple days later, and simply stood before them for almost ten minutes.  There are only a few of these in the US— D.C., Los Angeles, and Williamstown, MA… but to see these physically before you is an awe-inspiring experience.