The middle-class family Claude Monet was born into was average in every way. The son that was born into that middle-class family was not average but will be remembered in the art world for many years. He drew cartoons for his family and friends and would get as much as $60 for each piece. He did hundreds of these and gave the money to his aunt to hold for him. The day Monet accompanied a local artist to paint and saw what painting could be, it was as though a veil had been lifted from his eyes. The local artist Boudin did a lot for forming Monet's love of outdoor painting and painting ordinary people in ordinary clothes.
             Though he could not get a grant or money from his father Monet left to attend art school in Paris at eighteen years of age. While attending class at Gleyre's studio, he met Frederic Bazille, Pierre Auguste Renoir, and Alfred Sisley who would become his painting companions and supporters for life.
             On April 15, 1874, Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, and Sisley staged an exhibition in Paris to show their paintings that they were having trouble being shown at the Salon. The Salon was a famous gallery in Paris. Many people who came to their exhibition were bewildered by their pictures of landscapes and everyday life with their rough surfaces and patches of brilliant colors. The spectators thought that they were untrained and trying to get attention. The show had one positive effect it gave the group their name. One of Monet's paintings of Le Havre, showing two boats leaving a harbor as a red sun rises in the midst of the sea and the sky, titled the impression. Critics pounced on the word impression and mocked it. The group was now known to this day as the impressionist painters.
             An auction in 1875 of works by Monet, Renoir, Sisley, and Morisot resulted in actual violence. The auctioneer had to call the police to keep the people from tearing the canvases with canes and umbrellas. Most of the pictures sold at the auction did no...