Art
You can practically feel the cold water of the River Seine on your skin as you look at Claude Monet’s Bathers at La Grenouillère. People are dotted about in the river in the sun, their opaque bodies floating among ethereal shimmers of silver and green. But Monet plays a trick on you. He uses a French academic painting method popular in the 17th century to set up his easel against the day, looking at the light from the shade: thus the water nearest us under sheltering trees is darker, the air itself seemingly chilled. Just by looking at the painting, letting your eyes move from the sunny distance to the shady foreground, without realising why, you are yourself cooled down. Jonathan Jones
