Regatta At The Metropolitan Museum Of Art

Art has the ability to tell a story, to connect with the pictures, and to allow people to express their imagination. Once a person looks at an artwork whether it is a drawing, sculpture, or pottery the viewer is taken to the artist’s world. This paper will discuss the description, analysis, and interpretation of a painting called Regatta at Saint-Adresse painted by the French painter Claude Monet at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Monet designed this painting in 1867 and applied oil painting on canvas. The size of the painting is twenty-nine and five-eighths inches by forty inches. The setting of the artwork takes place on the Le-Havre beach where people watch the regatta on the ocean in Saint-Adresse. Regatta means a sequence of boat races in which sailors row or sail their boats. Saint-Adresse is a city located in the Haute-Normandie region in northern France. Monet has painted this picture during the Impressionist period that took place from 1870-1890 where it
stressed movement and color. To summarize, Monet created a painting that displayed a boat race at the Le-Havre beach in France during the 19th century.
Monet paints with cool colors mostly blue for the sky and the ocean.
He paints the hills in dark green also he mixes green with the blue ocean. The people in the painting look as though they are middle-class because the men wear suits and hats while the ladies wear long dresses and hold their umbrellas. The man standing and wearing a gray suit with a beige hat is Monet’s father. The booth on the beach towards the city could be the ticket stand and the people gathered there are buying tickets to watch the race. The triangles of the sails along with the curvy lines of the clouds and ocean reappear throughout the painting. There is a boat on the coast that is preparing to set out into the ocean. Not much of the sky is shown since the clouds are covering the sky. While observing the picture we focus more on the beach rather than the buildings in Saint-Adresse since the buildings are not as big as the sailboats in the ocean. To conclude, these were the colors, shapes, and activities shown in this
painting.
Sometimes not much is thought out in some features of a painting. In particular, by looking at the hands of the four people in the bottom left corner we do not see their fingers. The people who are getting in the boat and the group of people who are gathered at the beach look like spots from afar. There is not much detail placed in creating the people on the beach. To explain we cannot see the eyes, mouth, or nose just their bodies. The clouds at the bottom are painted using curvy lines, but as we move to the top it is as though that Monet just took his brush and moved his arm back and forth. The clouds towards the top made me think of cirrus clouds. The pathway from the city to the beach is supposed to have stairs, but Monet just paints a brown diagonal line between the two locations. In brief, Monet places more attention on the beach than the people and the city.
A picture does not have one definite meaning; it has multiple explanations. At the museum, seeing Regatta at Saint-Adresse for the first time made me feel relaxed. The time of day of this scene was a sunny Saturday afternoon and the people decided to sit at the beach to watch the boats race against each other in the ocean, hang out with their friends, and have a good time. They are being entertained by the race that is occurring in the ocean. The people wanted to escape their troubles life throws at them and enjoy the weather. The roughness in the sand symbolizes frustration, discouragement, and struggles we all face from time to time. The sea represents calmness letting people know everything will be alright one day. The sailboats make me think that they are a mode of transportation for people to wanting to attain tranquility. During the time where television and internet was not available around in the world, going outside and looking at the scenery was one form of entertainment. Therefore, Regatta at Saint-Adresse portrays excitement, peacefulness, and fascination.
As stated before, art has the capability to relate to the illustrations, to permit expression of their ideas, and to narrate an adventure. The artist’s world is revealed once the person looks at the picture presented before them. Overall, it is essential to preserve the beauty of beaches and oceans by not littering and not wasting too much water, so that we can all sit on a beach during our free time enjoying the scenery just like the citizens of Saint-Adresse.