Poplar
Trees
circa 1891
Water and fire. The
speckles of blues, pinks and greens in the foreground come together to form
four shoots of Poplar trunks, all standing in a deep bay of shade. Their tall
thin silhouettes, defined by the contrast between the lightness of the sky and
by the cool planes of colour of their bark, represent a harmony in nature -
like four soft notes on a sheet of music. Their stout branches face up and
outwards, and the trees appear healthy and perfectly in tune with their
surroundings. A stillness varnishes the scene like a breeze: it is transparent,
invisible, but nonetheless felt.
The fresh tones of
paint composing the four trunks create a screen through which the further rows
of Poplars and the large sun-bathed field are seen. Using only two colour types
- cool versus warm - Monet infused this picture with opposing emotions; with clashing emotions. Reduced to a collage
of yellow and orange specks, the background clump of trees comes to resemble a
lightly-scorched patch of canvas - it visually argues with the calm chilliness in the foreground. In this is not only the picture's balance, but its simultaneous
struggle to equalise the conflicting tempers.
Though whose tempers
are they: nature's, our own or Monet's? It is unclear - though what is clear is
that, in this picutre, these moods will never merge. The foreground, the solemn,
tranquil state-of-mind, reigns as the strongest of the two: unpolluted,
unaffected and able to hold its ground against the fiery tempest lurking in the distance.
