Abhishek Ray

Intro To Humanities
Dr. Cremean
Date: 1/28/18
Response To Claude Monet’s “The Sheltered Path”
This art falls in the art movement of Impressionism(34). It is interesting that the birth of

this movement’s name came from one of Monet’s work itself “Impression, soleil levant”

(Impression, Sunrise). True to its nature, it depicts small brush strokes, depicting reality with the

sense of journey. Like many of the impressionist artwork this is set in the outdoors as the artists

painted in the open itself due the ease of the availability of commercial paint during this time.

The depiction of nature in this picture is very life like with very careful individual strokes for

many of the leaves. There are two distinct parts of this painting which is separated by the tree

line. As it sperate the polar contrast there is a slight intermingling of the two which adds to the

‘dreamy’ image.

At the fist sight of this artistic piece it gives a very hazy image almost as if it were

straight out of the painter’s memory accentuated by the dappled rough texture. The oil on

canvas(62) helps gives it various hues of every element of the setting. Although the colors are

low on intensity(47) it instills the mellow mood of the story that it tries to convey. Its

composition(45) lacks sharp edges and almost has a landscape orientation to it but not quite. The

plot of the picture seems to be set during the transition of the fall and winter season as seen by

the mixture of yellow and brown leaves of the trees. The varied intensity of shades on the trees

gives it more mass relative to the other subjects. Placement of the yellow shrubs and the white

clouds makes the whole piece a little asymmetrical(52) making these two areas the focal points

of the whole scene. Use of shifting perspective(55) has been impressively used to show the
person in distance giving it an almost spiritual vibe to it as it allows the viewer to go on a ride

from the shrubs to the person to the cloudy sky along with offering a sense of deep space as it the

road meet the horizon far away and fades. On this journey we go from a dark to light contrast

which evokes a sense of progressive warmth and a ‘feel good’ sensation. The individual strokes

too every element has variety of colors without any hint of mix which is a sharp interchanging

spectrum that catches the eye. Also, the wavy road in the middle gives it a sense of motion. To

add, ‘the walker’ also seems to be in mid motion of the next steps. A very peculiar detail that’s

worth noticing is that Monet leaves a patch of soil with no grass on it on the left side of the

picture which probably means that he was indeed mimicking an actual view of somewhere in

France, Europe and that he wanted to stay true to it.

Every artwork serves a purpose and Monet’s ‘The Sheltered Path’ has a positive

philosophical one as it gets the viewer to contemplate about the path of life which gives some

sort of assurance that it’d end on the bright side. Although it may look straightforward this

painting is open to various interpretation which is it’s true beauty. The changing color of trees of

the rows which is portrayed very accurately is a symbol of every stage of life and how we are

mere mortal creatures on this planet upon which we life today but will eventually fade away. In

the end though it is all bright and beautiful like the pearly white sky.

All in all, this revolutionary piece of painting by Monet was monumental in shaping the

path for the generations of Impressionist artists to come. The depth of this marvel lies in its

simplicity. By focusing on the overall picture rather than details with his short and broken brush

strokes, Monet successfully ambience of the whole of being outdoors. It was refreshing for art

lovers of his time to experience such fresh and alive content given that formerly they were all
done in studios. Several of Monet’s friends faced backlash in the beginning but people grew a

taste for such work eventually.