Impression - Le Reveillon

I have, ever since I started understanding what little I understand about art, been an ardent admirer of the Impressionists, especially Edgar Degas and Claude Monet. My joy and delight was absolutely undiluted and unbriddled when I went for the Impressionist exhibition last year at the Museum in Montpellier, so much so that at one point I had the guard following me suspiciously! Even now when I recall the moment when I walked into the hall which housed Monet's biggest works, my skin breaks into goosebumps. It is strange then, that I haven't blogged at all about Claude Monet (1840-1926) whose painting, Impression, Soleil Levant (Sunrise) gave the name to the school of artists who primarily painted in plein air, making the most of the natural light and atmosphere and allowing it to reflect in their oeuvre along with their own individual perceptions and sensations vis-à-vis the subject. Last night as I revisited some of my favourite poems and browsed through the poems archive discovering previously unknown treasures, I found myself reading Oscar Wilde's Impression - Le Reveillon, which beautifully encapsulates my very own thoughts on the sublime beauty of a sunrise, the natural and the artistic interpretation. Since I find myself incapable of expressing the beauty of Claude Monet's oeuvre in my own words, I am shamelessly borrowing Wilde's words...

The sky is laced with fitful red,
The circling mists and shadows flee,
The dawn is rising from the sea,
Like a white lady from her bed.

And jagged brazen arrows fall
Athwart the feathers of the night,
And a long wave of yellow light
Breaks silently on tower and hall,

And spreading wide across the wold
Wakes into flight some fluttering bird,
And all the chestnut tops are stirred,
And all the branches streaked with gold.