France is a lot more than just the land of the Eiffel Tower, croissants and wine. A beautiful land that has both mountains and beaches, France has a rich history that includes beautiful art that dates back thousands of years.
French art includes all artistic works done in the region of France. The works include a wide range of styles and forms such as plastic or visual arts of woodwork, textile, and architecture. France has a long and interesting history of arts, dating back to the ancient times.
A famous and important part of French culture that can be enjoyed by all families alike are visual arts, like paintings. People come from all over the world to see the most famous art museums like the Louvre, located in Paris. There are some of the most well-known pieces located in the Louvre, including the Mona Lisa painted by Leonardo da Vinci.
A very special type of artistic technique originated in Paris in the mid-1800s. Painters, like Claude Monet, used small brush strokes in a type of painting called ‘impressionism’. Many paintings by Monet and other impressionists, such as Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Mary Cassatt are on display at the Louvre Museum. Claude Monet was a founder of French Impressionist painting, and renowned for expressing one’s perceptions before nature, especially as applied to plein-air landscape painting.
The period of the Renaissance helped France to blossom into a cultural powerhouse. Artists started channeling specifically French traditions into their works while schools and universities began dedicating much of their efforts to exploring art, especially architecture. This defined France’s identity and its culture to the rest of Europe. New churches, palaces, châteaux, fortresses, museums and galleries were popping up all over and painters around Europe started to perceive France as a central stage of the contemporary world.