Since our recent move from Texas extended our homeschool year, we saved our study of Impressionism for after the completion of our history studies.
It was nice to just relax and learn all about this beautiful art technique.
Great Book Recommendation
We are using a terrific book for this: Monet and the Impressionists for Kids: Their Lives Ideas, 21 Activities by Carol Sabbeth.
Interestingly many of the lessons and activities easily included the painting of our house and choosing plants for our garden.
Paris home to Impressionism
I set the excitement for the unit by talking first about Paris, where Impressionism began.
I told them that recently I had been looking at pictures of this beautiful city at night, when I began to wonder when this transformation occurred.
For the last few years we have studied about the numerous wars of the French Revolution, the barricades, etc.
How did Paris become as lovely as it is today, especially at night?
Surprisingly, the answer was in our Impressionism book.
While sitting at the computer, we looked at stunning pictures of Paris at night. .
Napoleon III responsible for the City of Lights
I am waiting to hear their exclamation of disbelief when they read in their art book that Napoleon III was responsible for this!
The kids and I have a running joke now about Napoleon (and sometimes the III) always showing up, week by week.
They thought he went into exile with his ideals a long time ago.
Claude Monet’s Garden Inspiration near Paris
One of the Impressionists, Claude Monet, famously painted in his Giverny garden near Paris.
In Monet’s later years, he developed his garden on his property specifically to inspire him for his painting.
One of our Monet field trips from the book the other day was to take the kids to the nursery with me to select plants to enhance the small garden we inherited when we recently purchased this house.
Since we have recently moved here from Texas, we are finding a lot of new plants.
It was exciting to purchase new varieties that I’ve never had success with in Texas.
Plein Air painting becomes popular for Impressionists
Part of the idea of Impressionism, at least for Monet, was to be inspired by the outdoors and to paint in natural lighting at different times of the day, to capture a variety of effects.
During this time the travel easel and art kit were developed, so that artists like Monet could take their art supplies with them and go wherever they wanted to paint, whether it was a field, the sea or the sky.
In fact the artist who painted the bluebonnet paintings we saw at the Witte Museum in San Antonio last autumn used this plein air technique.
Importance of Color to Impressionists
We also learned a lot about color, which was interesting since we were repainting the house.
Looking at lots of painting samples on all the walls to see how the light reflected off the color, thus affecting the shade, versus how the same colors looked at night with less light, incidentally replicated exactly what the Impressionist artists considered for their paintings.
Meanwhile the photo below has a sneak peak at my sewing projects for our upcoming Gilded Age Becoming History presentation.
My kids completed lots of art projects from the book
The beautiful header picture painted by my non-artist daughter came from one of the lessons in the book.
Because she was also busy finishing other subjects, she completed only three of the projects in the book,
My artistic son, however, completed seven projects, since he finished his school year several weeks ago.
All of the projects will be formally showcased in our upcoming Gilded Age history presentation.
I liked how approachable all these art projects were, for both the non-artist and the budding artist. Fun and easy, we learned a lot.
