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Claude
Monet biography and paintings
Claude
Monet (1840-1926).
French Impressionist painter. He is regarded as the archetypal Impressionist in
that his devotion to the ideals of the movement was unwavering throughout his
long career, and it is fitting that one of his pictures---Impression: Sunrise
(Musée Marmottan, Paris; 1872)---gave the group his name.
Monet
's youth was spent
in Le Havre, where he first excelled as a caricaturist but was then converted
to 
landscape painting by his early mentor Boudin, from whom he derived his firm predilection
for painting out of doors. In 1859 he studied in Paris at the Atelier Suisse and
formed a friendship with Pissarro. After two years' military service in Algiers,Monet
returned to Le Havre and met Jongkind, to whom he said he owed `the definitive
education of my eye'. He then, in 1862, entered the studio of Gleyre in Paris
and there met Renoir, Sisley, and Bazille, with whom he was to form the nucleus
of the Impressionist group. Monet's devotion to painting out of doors is illustrated
by the famous story concerning one of his most ambitious early works, Women in
the Garden (Musée d'Orsay, Paris; 1866-67). The picture is about 2.5 meters high
and to enable him to paint all of it outside he had a trench dug in the garden
so that the canvas could be raised or lowered by pulleys to the height he required.
Courbet visited him when he was working on it and said Monet would not paint even
the leaves in the background unless the lighting conditions were exactly right.
During the Franco-Prussian
War (1870-71) Monet took refuge in England with Pissarro: he studied the work
of Constable and Turner, painted the Thames and London parks, and met the dealer
Durand-Ruel, who was to become one of the great champions of the Impressionists.
From 1871 to 1878 Monet lived at Argenteuil, a village on the Seine near Paris,
and here were painted some of the most joyous and famous works of the Impressionist
movement, not only by Monet, but by his visitors Manet, Renoir and Sisley. In
1878 he moved to Vétheuil and in 1883 he settled at Giverny, also on the Seine,
but about 40 miles from Paris. After having experienced extreme poverty, Monet
began to prosper. By 1890 he was successful enough to buy the house at Giverny
he had previously rented and in 1892 he married his mistress, with whom he had
begun an affair in 1876, three years before the death of his first wife. From
1890 he concentrated on series of pictures in which he painted the same subject
at different times of the day in different lights---Haystacks or Grainstacks (1890-91)
and Rouen Cathedral (1891-95) are the best known. He continued to travel widely,
visiting London and Venice several times (and also Norway as a guest of Queen
Christiana), but increasingly his attention was focused on the celebrated water-garden
he created at Giverny, which served as the theme for the series of paintings on
Water-lilies that began in 1899 and grew to dominate his work completely (in 1914
he had a special studio built in the grounds of his house so he could work on
the huge canvases).
In
his final years Claude Monet was troubled by failing eyesight, but he painted
until the end. He was enormously prolific and many major galleries have examples
of his work.
Biography courtesy
of Web Museum, Paris
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