How Monet's Palette Developed: The Reader or Springtime

Join me in exploring another of Claude Monet's exquisite paintings - 'The Reader' - by creating another of the color studies that I find so enlightening. Painted in 1872 we will see that Monet had expanded his palette beyond the Old Master colors he was using for the last painting we looked at (The Beach at Trouville, 1870). By this stage his palette consisted of:

yellow ocher
cadmium yellow
red ocher
cadmium orange
vermilion
alizarin crimson
cobalt violet
ultramarine blue
cobalt blue
emerald green
viridian green

Note that it still includes the earth colors (yellow and red ocher) - we will see in later videos how Monet stopped using these and the effect that this had on his paintings.

We will see how Monet used two-color mixing to create subtle shifts of color within the painting, and once again we'll see how colors appear to change as they are laid next to each other. Monet exploits this effect masterfully - there are some amazing grays in this painting, and some tiny pinks and purples that set off the other colors beautifully!

The original of the work (which was originally known as 'Springtime') is held by the Walters Art Museum, and a downloadable image of the painting can be found here https://art.thewalters.org/detail/10078 if you want to create your own color study.

I hope you enjoy stealing some more from Claude - and please don't forget to subscribe!