Claude Monet

Claude Monet was born in Paris in 1840 but spent his early life in Le Havre. Monet loved to draw and spent much of his time sketching caricatures of people. He met a marine painter named Boudin, who encouraged him to paint out doors in the open air, a practice he never gave up. In 1860, he joined with the army in Algeria, after two years he went to Paris, although his parents objected, to study painting under Charles Gleyre. Monet disliked the classical school of painting, which was then popular and joined several other artists whose ideas agreed with his own. Monet made several lasting friendships with the artists who would later become known as the Impressionists. They included Pissarro, Cezanne, Renoir, Sisley, and Bazille. Monet and several of his friends painted for a time out-of-doors in the Barbizon district.

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When he returned to France he began to exhibit the paintings which he became famous for, “Fontainebleau Forest”, “The Sun in a Fog”, “Waterloo Bridge”, and “Rouen Cathedral. ” By 1883, Monet had become successful, and retired from Paris to his home in Giverny. Monet's representation of light was based on his knowledge of the laws of optics as well as his own observations of his subjects.

In 1874, Sisley, Morisot, and Monet organized the first impressionist group show, which was fiercely bashed by the critics. This style of painting became known as impressionism. They made up the term “impressionism” after Monet's “Impression, Rising Sun”, which he painted in 1872. Even with repeated criticism from the art community against this style of painting, gradually Monet won recognition and Monet became prosperous and well known. Their association was a

way for them to exhibit their works away from the classical paintings which were held in the

Common. During the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, Monet lived in England. He did not paint an object violet by mixing red and blue together on his palette. He painted in his own garden at Giverny. Monet also had a certain new way of painting bright colors. Eliminating black and gray from his palette, Monet had rejected the classical academic approach taught at the art school on landscapes.

In the last decade of his life Monet, nearly blind, painted a group of large water lily murals, Nympheas for the Musee de l'Orangerie in Paris.

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