
Le déjeuner sur l'herbe (right section), 1865–1866, Paris, with Gustave Courbet, Frédéric Bazille and Camille Doncieux, first wife of the artist, Musée d'Orsay Illness forced his return to Le Havre, where he bought out his remaining service and met Johan Barthold Jongkind, who together with Boudin was an important mentor to Monet. His time in Algeria had a powerful effect on Monet, who later said that the light and vivid colours of North Africa "contained the gem of my future researches". He was called for military service and served under the Chasseurs d'Afrique (African Hunters), in Algeria, from 1861 to 1862. The Woman in the Green Dress, Camille Doncieux, 1866, Kunsthalle Bremen Paris and Algeria įrom 1858 to 1860, Monet continued his studies in Paris, where he enrolled in Académie Suisse and met Camille Pissarro in 1859. He lived with his father and aunt, Marie-Jeanne Lecadre Lecadre would be a source of support for Monet in his early art career. Monet thought of Boudin as his master, whom "he owed everything to" for his later success. In around 1858, he met fellow artist Eugène Boudin, who would encourage Monet to develop his techniques, teach him the " en plein air" (outdoor) techniques for painting and take Monet on painting excursions. He began his first drawing lessons from Jacques-François Ochard, a former student of Jacques-Louis David. He was an apathetic student who, after showing skill in art from young age, began drawing caricatures and portraits of acquaintances at age 15 for money. On 1 April 1851, he entered Le Havre secondary school of the arts. His mother was a singer, and supported Monet's desire for a career in art. His father, a wholesale merchant, wanted him to go into the family's ship-chandling and grocery business, but Monet wanted to become an artist. In 1845, his family moved to Le Havre in Normandy.

Despite being baptised Catholic, Monet later became an atheist. On, he was baptised in the local Paris church, Notre-Dame-de-Lorette, as Oscar-Claude, but his parents called him simply Oscar. He was the second son of Claude Adolphe Monet and Louise Justine Aubrée Monet, both of them second-generation Parisians.
#PAINT IMPRESSIONIST STYLE SERIES#
Among the best-known examples are his series of haystacks (1890–91), paintings of the Rouen Cathedral (1894), and the paintings of water lilies in his garden in Giverny that occupied him continuously for the last 20 years of his life.įrequently exhibited and successful during his lifetime, Monet's fame and popularity soared in the second half of the 20th century when he became one of the world's most famous painters and a source of inspiration for a burgeoning groups of artists.īiography Birth and childhood Ĭlaude Monet was born on 14 November 1840 on the fifth floor of 45 rue Laffitte, in the 9th arrondissement of Paris. Monet's ambition to document the French countryside led to a method of painting the same scene many times so as to capture the changing of light and the passing of the seasons. From 1883, Monet lived in Giverny, also in northern France, where he purchased a house and property and began a vast landscaping project, including a water-lily pond. A key early influence was Eugène Boudin who introduced him to the concept of plein air painting. His early works include landscapes, seascapes, and portraits, but attracted little attention. He went on to study at the Académie Suisse, and under the academic history painter Charles Gleyre, where he was a classmate of Auguste Renoir. He was very close to his mother, but she died in January 1857 when he was sixteen years old, and he was sent to live with his childless, widowed but wealthy aunt, Marie-Jeanne Lecadre.

Although his mother, Louise-Justine Aubrée Monet, supported his ambitions to be a painter, his father, Claude-Adolphe, disapproved and wanted him to pursue a career in business. Monet was raised in Le Havre, Normandy, and became interested in the outdoors and drawing from an early age. The term "Impressionism" is derived from the title of his painting Impression, soleil levant, exhibited in 1874 (the "exhibition of rejects") initiated by Monet and his associates as an alternative to the Salon. During his long career, he was the most consistent and prolific practitioner of impressionism's philosophy of expressing one's perceptions before nature, especially as applied to plein air (outdoor) landscape painting. Oscar-Claude Monet ( UK: / ˈ m ɒ n eɪ/, US: / m oʊ ˈ n eɪ, m ə ˈ-/, French: 14 November 1840 – 5 December 1926) was a French painter and founder of impressionist painting who is seen as a key precursor to modernism, especially in his attempts to paint nature as he perceived it.
