Claude Monet’s pieces titled On the Banks of the Seine and The Frogpond were painted respectively in 1868 and 1869. Both pieces are currently displayed on the Special Exhibition: “Monet: The Early...

Claude Monet’s pieces titled On the Banks of the Seine and The Frogpond were painted respectively in 1868 and 1869. Both pieces are currently displayed on the Special Exhibition: “Monet: The Early Years” and their location is the Legion of Honor, San Francisco. These two paintings are relatively small because The Frogpond is at 74.6 cm x 99.7 cm while On the Bank of the Seine, Bennecourt is at 81.5 x 100.7 cm. Also, both paintings are landscape hanging on the same wall. Both paintings reveal the characteristics of Impressionist paintings, but Monet is experimenting with different ways of reflecting water. An essential aspect of the Impressionistic artwork is plein air painting while both paintings are landscape worked outdoors. In On the Banks of the Seine, Monet depicts a seated female figure in an open-air sitting in the countryside. In The Frogpond, he represents the play of light on water, boats and swimmers in the suburban Paris where the emerging middle class to enjoy new pleasures. As an Impressionist Monet complete his works in the open air instead of in the studio. Also, his subjects are focus on the landscape and the scenes of contemporary life, which have made his painting an avant-garde art in 19th-century. As with Courbet’s The Stone Breakers and Manet’s Luncheon the Grass, Monet’s paintings are depicting the contemporary life rather than depict nudes as goddesses that would have been societally acceptable. So the Impressionist has challenged the the long established hierarchy of subject matter by the Academy, which exemplifies Monet’s plein air paintings as an avant-garde art in 19th-century. The asymmetrical arrangements of forms and brush strokes emphasized the two-dimensional surface of the canvas. For one thing, these two paintings have a eliminating linear perspective compared with the traditional history painting, such as The School of Athens. For one thing, compared with The School of Athens as an example of traditional history painting,...