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Claude Monet is one of the greats of the world of art. He was the founder of the French Impressionists school, the movement being named after Monet's painting Impression: Soleil Levant (Impression: Sunrise) - pictured right. Claude Oscar Monet was born on November 14th, 1840 in Paris, and died from lung cancer on December 5th, 1926. When he was 19, in 1859, Monet entered the Swiss Academy in Paris and a year later met Pissaro and Courbet. Not long after, Monet saw for the first time Edouard Manet's paintings. Inspired, Monet went out and painted "en plein air" in the Fontainebleau forest. Such painting outside was to be an important aspect of the Impressionist School. For an explanation of Manet and Monet's approach to painting, click here. It was not until 1865 that Monet's paintings were exhibited in the Salon, for previously the art establishment had regarded his works as unfinished sketches. By 1869 he was painting regularly in the company of Renoir and shortly after got married (to Camille) and went to live in London to escape war-torn France. In 1874, long back in France, Monet exhibited "Impression : sunrise" (for a full page of Monet's Impression: Sunrise click here) at the first Impressionist exhibition, which was held in the studio of Nadar. A few years later, in 1879, his wife Camille died, a year after the birth of their second son.
In 1883 Monet rented a house at Giverny, Normandy. This was to be the location of the artist's famous flower and water gardens, where he painted his giant canvases of water lilies. By 1900 Monet had become famous. That year, when an exhibition was held in Paris, a journalist interviewed him about his life. On November 26 the newspaper Le Temps published Monet's 'autobiography'. By those in the know the artist is said to be rather generous with the facts, building himself into something of a legend in this newspaper article. Monet lived in his rough-cast pink house in Giverny until he died (from lung cancer) on December 5th, 1926. During the few years before his death his eyesight had become increasingly poor, though an operation on one eye to remove a cateract brought back some vision. Neverthless he continued to paint until the end, inspiring many artists who came after him. Monet was himself inspired by his love of Eastern imagery, by flowers and plants, and most of all by water and mist-laden air. He collected Japanese prints and his large collection has now been restored and is displayed in several rooms of the house at Giverny, which is now open to the public during the warmer part of the year.We
have devoted separate pages to information and images of Monet's
paintings of his flower garden (click
here) and of his water garden (click
here). For a selection of prints spanning Monet's
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