Editing Normandy (section)

===Painting===
[[File:Claude Monet - Woman with a Parasol - Madame Monet and Her Son - Google Art Project.jpg|thumb|upright|[[Claude Monet]], ''[[Woman with a Parasol – Madame Monet and Her Son]]'', 1875]]

Normandy has a rich tradition of painting and gave to France some of its most important artists.

In the 17th century, some major French painters were Normans like [[Nicolas Poussin]], born in [[Les Andelys]] and [[Jean Jouvenet]].

[[Romanticism]] drew painters to the Channel coasts of Normandy. [[Richard Parkes Bonington]] and [[J. M. W. Turner]] crossed the Channel from Great Britain, attracted by the light and landscapes. [[Théodore Géricault]], a native of Rouen, was a notable figure in the Romantic movement, its famous ''[[Le Radeau de la Méduse|Radeau de la Méduse]]'' being considered come the breakthrough of pictorial romanticism in France when it was officially presented at the [[Salon of 1819]]. The competing Realist tendency was represented by [[Jean-François Millet]], a native of La Hague. The landscape painter [[Eugène Boudin]], born in Honfleur, was a determining influence on the impressionists and was highly considered by Monet.
[[File:Eugène Chigot (French), Printemps en Normandie (Springtime in Normandy).jpg|thumb|[[Eugène Chigot]] (1860–1923), Printemps en Normandie (Springtime in Normandy) (1914/15)]]
[[File:Robert Antoine Pinchon, Un après-midi à l'Ile aux Cerises, Rouen, oil on canvas, 50 x 61.2 cm.jpg|thumb|left|[[Robert Antoine Pinchon]], ''Un après-midi à l'Ile aux Cerises, Rouen'', oil on canvas, 50 x 61.2 cm]]
Breaking away from the more formalised and classical themes of the early part of the 19th century, Impressionist painters preferred to paint outdoors, in natural light, and to concentrate on landscapes, towns and scenes of daily life.

Leader of the movement and father of modern painting, [[Claude Monet]] is one of the best known Impressionists and a major character in Normandy's artistic heritage. His [[Fondation Monet in Giverny|house and gardens]] at [[Giverny]] are one of the region's major tourist sites, much visited for their beauty and their water lilies, as well as for their importance to Monet's artistic inspiration. Normandy was at the heart of his creation, from the paintings of Rouen's cathedral to the famous depictions of the cliffs at [[Étretat]], the beach and port at [[Fécamp]] and the sunrise at [[Le Havre]]. It was ''[[Impression, Sunrise]]'', Monet's painting of Le Havre, that led to the movement being dubbed [[Impressionism]]. After Monet, all the main [[avant-garde]] painters of the 1870s and 1880s came to Normandy to paint its landscapes and its changing lights, concentrating along the Seine valley and the Norman coast.

Landscapes and scenes of daily life were also immortalised on canvas by artists that have included : [[William Turner (artist)|William Turner]], [[Gustave Courbet]], the Honfleur born Eugène Boudin, [[Camille Pissarro]], [[Alfred Sisley]], [[Auguste Renoir]], [[Gustave Caillebotte]], [[Eugène Chigot]],  [[Paul Gauguin]], [[Georges Seurat]], [[Paul Signac]], [[Pierre Bonnard]], [[Georges Braque]] and [[Pablo Picasso]]. While Monet's work adorns galleries and collections all over the world, a remarkable quantity of Impressionist works can be found in galleries throughout Normandy, such as the [[Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rouen|Museum of Fine Arts]] in Rouen, the Musée Eugène Boudin in [[Honfleur]] or the [[Musée Malraux|André Malraux Museum]] in [[Le Havre]].

[[Maurice Denis]], one of the leaders and theoricists of the [[Les Nabis|Nabis]] movement in the 1890s, was a native of Granville, in the department of Manche. [[Marie-Thérèse Auffray]], an [[expressionism|expressionist]] painter and member of the French resistance during WWII, lived and painted in the village of [[Échauffour]].

The ''[[Société Normande de Peinture Moderne]]'' was founded in 1909 by [[Pierre Dumont (painter)|Pierre Dumont]], [[Robert Antoine Pinchon]], Yvonne Barbier and Eugène Tirvert. Among members were [[Raoul Dufy]], a native of Le Havre, [[Albert Marquet]], [[Francis Picabia]] and [[Maurice Utrillo]]. Also in this movement were the Duchamp brothers, [[Jacques Villon]] and [[Marcel Duchamp]], considered one of the father of modern art, also natives of Normandy. [[Jean Dubuffet]], one of the leading French artist of the 1940s and the 1950s was born in Le Havre.