Listen free for 30 days

Listen with offer

Preview
  • Monet & Renoir

  • The Lives and Legacies of the Famous Impressionist Artists
  • By: Charles River Editors
  • Narrated by: Scott Clem
  • Length: 2 hrs and 6 mins
  • 3.7 out of 5 stars (3 ratings)

£0.00 for first 30 days

Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Monet & Renoir

By: Charles River Editors
Narrated by: Scott Clem
Try for £0.00

£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £6.99

Buy Now for £6.99

Pay using card ending in
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Please see our Privacy Notice, Cookies Notice and Interest-based Ads Notice.

Summary

To get a sense of the kind of prestige that Claude Monet enjoys within the art world, one need only learn that his Le Bassin Aux Nympheás (1919) - from his series of paintings featuring water lilies - sold for the equivalent of more than $70 million. This is a staggering price, especially considering that early in his life, Monet had been so poor and debt-ridden that some of his paintings were taken from him by creditors. How, exactly, did Monet progress from being an impoverished young Impressionist artist working at the vanguard of European art to the legendary master whose works command prices near the very pinnacle of the art world?

Naturally, Monet's commercial success soared exponentially in the decades following his death in 1926, at a time in which the prices commanded by the great masters of western art began rising in price at exponential rates. Yet even during his own lifetime, Monet enjoyed a sharp rise to fame and was canonized as one of the greatest painters in France. Following in the footsteps of Edouard Manet, Claude Monet was one of the first painters identified within the Impressionist circle (indeed, it was Monet himself who coined the label of Impressionist after using it in the title of one of his paintings). Where some artists reach the peak of their acclaim early in life, Monet's star continued to rise even throughout his old age; although some would argue that the last decade or so of his life were anticlimactic, at least from an artistic standpoint, his landmark water lilies were made during his elderly years. And even though Monet would continue to paint well after the canonical period of Impressionism had ended, his name was and remains synonymous with Impressionism, along with cherished acquaintances of his, including such luminaries as Pierre-August Renoir, Camille Pissarro, and Edouard Manet. Simply put, Monet is a monumental figure when it comes to examining western art during the second half of the 19th century.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir stands alongside Claude Monet at the very peak of Impressionist painting, and though neither of them can be credited with founding the movement (that honor likely goes to Edouard Manet or Edgar Degas), Renoir and Monet remain inextricably tied to the key characteristics of Impressionism: loose brushwork, outdoor painting, an emphasis on capturing natural light and shadow, and a focus on remaining in Paris and the surrounding countryside. Yet if Monet and Renoir are each remembered for their affiliation with these descriptors, differences nevertheless distinguish them, especially the fact that Renoir concentrated less on nature than did Monet, attending instead to scenes depicting Parisian leisure activity. This thematic concern for depicting scenes of idyllic Parisian enjoyment, such as rowing in boats or grand luncheons, imbues Renoir with a greater sense of joie-de-vivre than Monet or perhaps any of the other members of the Impressionist cohort. Even though Renoir's art shares much in common with his Impressionist colleagues, both his handling of paint and even his subject matter contain significant differences that render him truly unique as a painter.

That Renoir captured scenes of leisure better than any of his contemporaries was surprising and unlikely considering the background in which he was raised. Denied the opportunity for a proper education, Renoir's painting, which started at a young age, was borne more out of a need to work than in pursuit of a lifelong passion. Renoir certainly loved to paint, but like Monet, painting always remained his profession, and he treated it as such.

©2016 Charles River Editors (P)2017 Charles River Editors
activate_Holiday_promo_in_buybox_DT_T2

Listeners also enjoyed...

Legends of the Renaissance: The Life and Legacy of Michelangelo cover art
History's Greatest Artists: The Life and Legacy of Pablo Picasso cover art
History's Greatest Artists: The Life and Legacy of Vincent van Gogh cover art
American Legends: The Life of Jimmy Stewart cover art
American Legends: The Life of Cary Grant cover art
Legends of the Renaissance: The Life and Legacy of Leonardo da Vinci cover art
Discover: Music of the Romantic Era cover art
Tom and Jack cover art
David Lynch cover art
Becoming a Marine Biologist cover art
The Feud that Sparked the Renaissance cover art
The Eye cover art
Mozart: A Life from Beginning to End cover art
The Devil in the Gallery cover art
The Brilliance of the Color Black Through the Eyes of Art Collectors cover art
On Photography cover art

What listeners say about Monet & Renoir

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 3.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    1
  • 4 Stars
    1
  • 3 Stars
    0
  • 2 Stars
    1
  • 1 Stars
    0
Performance
  • 2 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    0
  • 4 Stars
    0
  • 3 Stars
    1
  • 2 Stars
    1
  • 1 Stars
    1
Story
  • 3.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    0
  • 4 Stars
    2
  • 3 Stars
    0
  • 2 Stars
    1
  • 1 Stars
    0

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Sort by:
Filter by:
  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

hard to listen to

At first, I honestly thought the narration was AI. The narrator has no background in either art or French. There are so many mispronounced names, places, and everyday grammatical phrases, it made it incredibly difficult to listen to. Audible, or whomever hires narrators, need to trial them carefully. Poorly read.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    1 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    2 out of 5 stars

Worst ever narration

This is totally spoilt by an unbelievably bad narrator - his appalling pronunciation and intonation make some of the passages virtually impossible to understand.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

1 person found this helpful