On a summer afternoon...

Claude Monet, Water Lilies and Clouds, 1903

YOU AND ME IN A TREE

Would you like to live in a tree, you and
me? Like a wee set of robins in a sweet
little nest at the tippy-tippy top of a great,
mighty tree, oh, how high up in the air
we would be, and how very, very far
we could see, and how positively lovely
life would be if we lived in a tree!

As for me, I like cottonwoods. They're not
the least bit shy. They tell such delightful
secrets in a whisper that you're meant to
understand. When gentle breezes blow,
the sly leaves kiss and tell, and the limbs
brush hands... so graceful to behold are
they, such simple pleasure in the harmony
they make. I love to wake up just when
dawn begins to turn the leaves from gray
to gold, one after one, for every star that
disappears above.

There is a happiness in their activity, no
matter if the day is cold or hot, dry or
steamy. Ice and snow don't seem to hold
them back from their festivities. I see them
dancing when the wind is wild, and never
mind the rain. They celebrate the clouds
that tumble in and hide the sun -- a sign to
let the fun begin. They wiggle, waggle,
jump and spin and somersault; their
branches, ever dignified, sedately bend
this way and that, as proper as a minuet--
except the young stems at the top, which
whip about as if to slice the very sky.

I watch them from my window and

confess myself relieved that we don’t
need to live, just then, out in a tree, do
you and me. But when the last cloud
scurries off and I see robins hopping on
their nimble legs around the yard -- the
ground is thick with worms just begging
to be found -- and all the normal goings-
on of summer afternoons pick up where
they left off -- the buzzing of the honey-
bees, the opening of peonies... lawns
being mowed and gardens hoed and fat
old lazy cats meandering in search of
easy pickings, flattening to scratch their
backs wherever there's a gap between the
sidewalk and the pickets of a fence... the
planet seems to thrum in deep contentment,
and I sense the tree is wanting me to share
its comfort and felicity.

I see the very spot, just right for you and me,
not more than four feet up the trunk. It is
the perfect size for us, a book for each, a
half-a-dozen cookies and a few ripe, juicy
peaches. So we climb and sit and eat and
read and say hello occasionally to people
passing by, who smile and nod and think
it isn't odd, not in the least, to see us side by
side up in the tree, for certainly they're
used to such a view by now, and if they
shake their heads and think of you and me
as "strange old dears," it's with affection and,
perhaps, a bit of awe within the thought.
There's not a soul around who doesn't know
that this has been our favorite spot for more
than sixty years.

Children's Song Version

Would you like to live in a cottonwood tree,

You and me, you and me, you and me?

We could build a nest—oh, how merry we would be,

For a nest up in a tree must be heavenly.

But can you fly?

     Can I fly?

Can you fly away

To a place that's warm and dry?

When the wind blows cold?

When it rains or snows?

Where would we go, you and I?

We can have our tea in a tree when it's dry,

Not a cloud in the sky—if it rains, we can't fly away.

If it starts to pour, we can always go indoors

Where the cookies and the attic will be warm.

Let the robins gobble all the worms!

Bugs and thunderstorms are for the birds.

Claude Monet, 1840-1926

born in Paris, 1840

Renoir, Claude Monet
Reading, 1872

Claude Monet was and still is one of the most famous artists in the world. He painted for money, but he also liked to paint for the joy of it. Most of his paintings are scenes of water or nature. This is because he liked the way the outdoors looked in different seasons, in different light. He was one of the painters who invented Impressionism — a style of painting in which artists use dabs of color to show how a scene or object looks and how the light falls.

Monet liked to paint water. He liked the way colors reflected in the water. Boats, oceans, and lakes were some of his favorite subjects. He liked water so much that he fixed up a boat as a floating studio. Monet kept paints, brushes, canvas, and drawing supplies on his boat. 

In school, Monet didn't do very well. He said, "School seemed like a prison and I could never bear to stay there, especially when the sunshine beckoned and the sea was smooth." He always drew funny caricatures of his teachers. He got in trouble for his drawings, but he became very good at them.

At the age of nineteen, Claude had to join the army. He was sent to Algeria, a country in northern Africa. He liked the way the bright clear light of Algeria lit the sky, and  how the shadows moved when the wind blew. A year later Claude became very ill with typhoid fever and returned to France.

An artist called Eugene Boudin liked Monet's work. He told Monet that he should paint outside. "That way you can feel what you paint." Monet DID paint outdoors, but usually things would stick to the wet paint—sand, bits of rock, leaves, and other natural litter.

Monet made money by selling his paintings in art museums, including the great Salon in Paris. One painting that the Salon did not accept was The Women in the Garden (1867-1868). A model for the painting, Camille Concieux, would become his wife in 1870. They had two sons, Jean and Michel, before Camille died of tuberculosis in 1879.

The Women in the Garden

Monet and other artists began painting in a way that showed how pretty objects looked when the sunlight reflected on them. A newspaperman called these artists "Impressionists" after Monet's painting Impression: Sunrise. The newspaperman actually didn't care for the style, thinking that Impressionist art looked “unfinished.”

Often, Monet painted many pictures of the same things, in different seasons and at different times of the day. He tried to make colors, shadows, and light in his paintings appear as real as possible. 

Monet’s painting had made him rich, and in the 1880s he moved his family to a large farmhouse at Giverny. His second wife, Alice, died in 1911 and his elder son, Jean (married to Alice's daughter Blanche), died in 1914. It was Blanche who cared for him in his old age, as he was going blind. But he continued to paint until he died in 1926 at the age of 86. 

He spent the last ten years of his life painting scenes of his water garden. "What I need most of all are flowers, always, always," he said. These paintings are among his most beautiful and famous. Some of them are over forty feet wide. Among these late paintings are Water Lilies, Panel of Water Lily Decorations, Snow at Argenteuil, and Venice--the Grand Canal.

Sources: Wikipedia and library.thinkquest.org