Claude Monet’s painting of Rue Saint-Denis on the National Holiday
Several of you have mentioned you share my affection for Richard’s portrayal of the great Impressionist artist Claude Monet and the Impressionist School. Today, when we look at the paintings of Monet, Renoir, Bazille, Morisot and their fellow artists, we see many pretty, luminous pictures filled with shimmering color.

'La Lecture," a charming painting by Berthe Morisot, a prominent female Impressionist.

Monet's love for capturing the beauty of flowers and water is shown in his many paintings of waterlilies.
But we mustn’t forget this group was revolutionary, downright radical for the times. These artists chose to escape from the rigid confines of the studio and Biblical/mythological subjects to paint ordinary people doing ordinary things such as frolicking at boating parties, enjoying a good book, bathing a child.
They didn’t just paint hired artists’ models; their friends, family and fellow painters were also their subjects. These artists put farmers’ fields of haystacks and flower-strewn meadows with picnicking families on canvas.
They sought and found the extraordinary beauty in the everyday as they strove to be “painters of light.”
Above you see a portait of Claude (is it just me, or does his real hair look like a darker versions of early John Standring?) and of course, I cannot leave out Monsieur Monet as depicted by the incandescent Richard Armitage . . . sometimes a girl just needs a little artistry in her life.