in-arts.net
Claude Monet
1840-1926
Medival
Rannaissnce
13-14th century
14-15th cenury
15-16th century
16-17th century
17-18th century
18-19th century
Impressionism
Post Impressionism
Early 20th century
French painter, initiator, leader, and unswerving advocate of the Impressionist
style. 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.
Montet'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, he 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) he 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 he was troubled by failing eyesight, but he painted until the end.
He was enormously prolific and many major galleries have examples of his work.