Claude Monet

Monet Claude is a French painter, initiator, leader, and unswerving advocate from the Impressionist style. He could be deemed the archetypal Impressionist in that his devotion for the beliefs in the movement was unwavering throughout

his long career, and it is fitting that particular of his pictures-Impression: Sunrise -gave the group his name.

His youth was spent in Le Havre, where he first excelled as being a caricaturist but ended up being converted to landscape painting by his early mentor Boudin, from whom he derived his firm predilection for oil paintings outside. 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 who he said he owed `the definitive education of my

eye'. Then, in 1862, entered the studio of Gleyre in Paris where there met Renoir, Sisley, and Bazille, with whom he would have been to constitute the nucleus with the Impressionist group. Monet's devotion to oil paintings outside is illustrated

through the famous story concerning one of his most ambitious early works, Women from the Garden (Musee d'Orsay, Paris; 1866-67). The photo is all about 2.5 meters high and enable him to paint all of it outside he'd a trench dug inside the

garden so your canvas could be raised or lowered by pulleys to the height he required. Courbet visited him while he ran it and said Claude Monet would not paint even leaves in the shadows unless the sunlight

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 casino dealer Durand-Ruel, who had been to become one of many great

champions of the Impressionists. From 1871 to 1878 Monet lived at Argenteuil, a village around the Seine near Paris, and here were painted many of the most joyous and famous works of the Impressionist movement, not merely by Monet, but

by his visitors Manet, Renoir and Sisley. In 1878 he transferred to Vetheuil as well as in 1883 he settled at Giverny, also for the Seine, but about 40 miles from Paris. After having experienced extreme poverty, Monet started to prosper. By 1890

he was successful enough to get the house at Giverny he previously rented along with 1892 he married his mistress, that he begun an affair in 1876, 36 months before the death of his first wife. From 1890 he concentrated

on series of images in which he painted exactly the same subject at different points during the the afternoon in several lights---Haystacks or Grainstacks (1890-91) and Rouen Cathedral (1891-95) work best known. He continued traveling widely,

visiting London and Venice several times, but increasingly his attention was focused on the celebrated water-garden he created at Giverny, which served since the theme for the series of oil paintings on Water-lilies that began in 1899

and grew to dominate his work completely (in 1914 he had a particular studio built-in the lands of his house so he could work for the huge canvases).

In their final years he was troubled by failing eyesight, but he painted 'till the end. He was enormously prolific. Now many major galleries have types of Claude Monet's paintings.

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