Getty Museum Visit

After I had entered the room, I realized what it was about Impressionistic art that I loved so much. The amazing color. The nonconformity. The raw emotion. What a surreal feeling it was to stand there before the works of greats—the works of masters. Such a feeling I had only felt a few times beforehand, yet none had ever dealt with historical masterpieces—masterpieces that would alter the foundation of art and visual media until the end of time. As I strolled the room, I took care to notice every piece of art that was displayed. The van Gogh caught my eye immediately, but, unfortunately, there were restrictions on my ability to write about it. There had to be about forty works in the room. No sooner than I had started to look around again, however, that a second painting caught my eye. I had never seen it before, but something about it looked very familiar. Possibly the brilliant orange glistening over the mind-numbing grays and blues. Or maybe it was the quick brushstrokes that seemed to want to move quickly enough to literally capture the light being emitted from the incandescent sun. Whatever the case, as I stepped closer to the work, I realized what should have been obvious the second I placed my gaze upon it. It was a Monet. Indeed, Claude Monet had painted this wonderful Sunrise with oils on a canvas in the spring of 1873. Displayed at nineteen and a quarter by twenty-three and a half inches in the Impressionist room at the Getty Center, this magnificent work of art was one of the first examples of the Impressionist style of painting (Getty didactic placard). The focus of this painting is a boat sitting serenely in the water during sunrise. The boat is surrounded by several other ships captured in the dense morning fog, which is slowly being dissipated by the rising sun. The mixture of colors is beautiful; Monet truly achieves his goal of capturing what the eye sees, reflecting the light of the sun perfectly onto the water and creating a

Cited: Getty Museum Audio Tour: Claude Monet, Sunrise. Getty Museum Information Placard: Claude Monet, Sunrise. Sunrise (Marine). The J. Paul Getty Center Los Angeles. 24 April 2007