fame 4.1 Pierre August Renoir Moulin de la Galette • Johann Strauss Jr. Blue Danube

(Put materials on desks before beginning the lesson. You can ask students to share some ARTSY rules before

beginning. Place paintings/posters facing backwards on whiteboard. Play Strauss’ Waltz softly the background)

Welcome to the second FAME lesson for the year. In the first lesson we talked about artist William Harnett and

his painting My Gems. Do you remember what style of painting he was known for? Realism. And some of his

paintings were so real they “tricked the eye.” Do you remember the fancy French word for this? Trompe L’Oeil.

Today we’re going to look at a style of painting that is not meant to look real

but rather give the person viewing it an idea or “impression” of the object.

Our painting today is a picture of people waltzing and dancing to music like

that by our featured composer Austrian Johann Strauss Jr. (1825-1899). He

was a popular musician and known as Vienna’s beloved “Waltz King” for his

“symphonies for dancing.” We have been playing his most famous waltz, The

Blue Danube. The waltz is a musical composition with a very recognizable

RHYTHM. It is so distinct that there is a special ballroom dance to go with it!

You can play one of the youtube clips of the song and point out the distinct

1-2-3 rhythm.

Let’s look at the dancers in this painting. Show painting. How do the people

in the painting look? What is their mood? What are they doing? Where do

you think they are? They are outdoors; relaxing and socializing; they appear

happy. The full name of the painting is Le Bal du Moulin de la Galette

[Moo-LAN doo la Gal-EHT). In French, “moulin” means mill, and a “galette” is

a pastry similar to a pancake so it means “The Ball at the Pancake Mill.” It was

the fashion to hold Sunday afternoon dances at this café in the working class

part of Paris called Montmarte (mant-mart). You can read the description from Renoir’s perspective in A Weekend

With Renoir.

Do you remember these paintings? Show prints of Cassat’s Woman with Dog; Monet’s Water Lilies; Degas’ Ballet

Class from portfolio. Do you remember the name given to this style of painting? I gave you a clue when I

OBJECTIVE: Introduce

students to the “waltz

king” Strauss and listen to

the distinctive rhythm of

the waltz. Review

IMPRESSIONISM and the

practice of en plein air and

observe how shadow and

light create TEXTURE in

RENOIR’s painting.

“The figures dance on a ground that looks like purplish clouds darkening the sky on a stormy day” —contemporary journalist writing about Moulin de la Galette

INTRODUCTION:

Review 4.1 Artist

o William

Harnett, My

Gems

o Realism and

Trompe L’Oeil

COMPOSER: Johann

Strauss Jr. (1825-1899)

Vienna’s “Waltz

King”

The Blue Danube

Distinct 1-2-3

RHYTHM

PAINTING: Moulin de la

Galette

Outdoor café scene

of people dancing

Translates as “The

Ball at the Pancake

Mill (1849-1892)

The Blue Danube & The Waltz

The Blue Danube was so popular that they couldn’t print copies fast enough to keep up with the demand. A copper plate was etched with the musical notes and staff of the music, inked, then used to print 10,000 copies of the music until all the metal was worn down. Over a hundred copper plates were created—that’s over a million copies! The Waltz replaced the stylized French dances with sweeping triple meter music that gave dancers the opportunity to embrace one another. Some towns passed ordinances against the waltz, citing health hazards and the possibility of participants fainting or having heart attacks while engaged in this sinful, immoral dance.

mentioned that this painting was not real, but gave an impression. IMPRESSIONISM. For kindergarteners simply

introduce the term.

Impressionists loved to paint outdoors using natural light and bright colors. We’re going to teach you another

fancy French word today: En Plein Air which means painting in the open air. See vocabulary box. Our artist today

Pierre Auguste Renoir [Pea-AIR Oh-GUST Re-NWAR] (1841-

1819) was a French Impressionist painter. He asked his friends to

help him carry an enormous canvas to the old mill and then pose

for him. He scrutinized the effects of the light trickling through

the leafy trees, the spots of sunlight on the faces of his friends,

and the flickering shadows. Renoir then applied pure and brilliant

color with the short brush strokes that were one of the

characteristics of IMPRESSIONISM.

When we look at My Gems last lesson we talked about the way

Harnett arranged his special items in his still life in a particular way

to make it meaningful and interesting. Do you remember what

this art element is called? COMPOSITION. Show Art Elements

poster. What ART ELEMENTS stand out most in Renoir’s

painting? LIGHT AND SHADOW, COLOR AND TEXTURE. His use

of warm color and variegated shadow provide a youthful, sensual

glow to the skin. The broken brush strokes provide the interesting

all-over texture and despite the blurry look you can still

differentiate the textures: laces from silks, velvets from the crisp

straw in the hats.

Over his lifetime Renoir made several thousand paintings, and continued to paint when he suffered terrible

arthritis by taping paintbrushes to his arms! Today we will create our own impressionist painting. First we will have

you chose the color of your vase for your flowers. Next we will fold our colored paper in half and either trace or

freehand cut out our vase with scissors and set it aside. Then we will follow the instructions to create our

impressionistic floral paintings. These paints have a gel like consistency and you do not need to use a lot of it. We

will be painting lightly so they dry nicely. Remember this is impressionism and the paintings trick the eye,

therefore your flowers will not be perfect. The process we use today for painting the flowers will create an illusion

of a full vase of flowers from a distance.

Compare to other

IMPRESSIONIST

paintings: Cassat,

Monet and Degas

VOCABULARY: En Plein Air

Painting in the

open air

Impressionist

practice

ARTIST: French

Impressionist Pierre

Auguste Renoir (1841-

1819)

ART ELEMENTS: Show

Visual

LIGHT AND COLOR

SHADOW

TEXTURE

Art Project: Impressionist

floral painting

Choose paper for

vase

Cut vase

Follow docents to

work with gel-like

paint

Done in

impressionist style

VOCABULARY: EN PLEIN AIR

Plein air painting is about leaving the four walls of your studio behind and experiencing painting and drawing in the landscape. The practice goes back for centuries but was truly made into an art form by the French Impressionists. Their desire to paint light and its changing, ephemeral qualities, coupled with the creation of transportable paint tubes and the box easel allowed artists the freedom to paint “en plein air,” which is the French expression for “in the open air.” They used broken brush work to create a “blurry” or prismatic image to convey nature's mutability.