Oscar-Claude Monet was one of the most famous French painters of the last centuries. Founder of the Impressionist movement, Monet was born in Paris on November 14, 1840; Despite this, he did not always reside in the French capital, at the age of five. , he moved with his family to the Norman city of Le Havre, where his father could work as a merchant; Before, he ran a family business.
His mother, Louise, devoted herself to music and was a singer. The transfer to Le Havre deeply affected Monet as he came into contact with the coast and thus gained an intimate knowledge of the seascape.
- Working on painting according to nature was the hallmark of the Impressionist movement.
- It is also a habit that Monet has adopted; his paintings reflect the ever-changing impact of light and weather conditions.
At the age of 15, Monet sold vignettes and sketched in the pen of sailboats, almost technical in their details. Her aunt, Marie-Jeanne Lecadre, was an amateur painter who greatly influenced the painter’s future, and it was she who encouraged Claude to study drawing with a local artist.
“Color is my daily obsession, my joy and my torment. “- Claude Monet-
However, his life as a painter only began when he met the artist Eugene Boudin, who introduced the student to the then unusual practice of outdoor painting.
The experience set the course for Monet who, for more than 60 years, focused on visible phenomena, in addition, Monet has focused on innovation in effective methods to transform perception into pigment.
Monet’s return to Paris came between 1859 and 1860, but, to his family’s chagrin, he refused to enroll in the School of Fine Arts, frequenting the meeting places of some artists who had some fame and worked at the Swiss Academy, where he met Camille Pissarro.
However, this informal training was interrupted by a call to military service. Monét served from 1861 to 1862 in Algeria, where he was touched by the light and color of Africa.
Upon his return to Paris, he coincided with most of the most important artists of the time, including Renoir, Cézanne, Whistler and Manet. During this period, or at least before 1872, Monet discovered Japanese engraving, falling passionately in love with Asian motifs. This fascination, therefore, had a strong influence on the development of his artistic work.
The outstanding achievements of Monet’s prolific youth period can be seen in works completed between 1865 and 1870. During this period, however, he had not yet begun to fragment his brushstrokes into the characteristic broken strokes that would become the hallmark. Impressionist style.
In 1870 Monet married Camille Doncieux, who had already given birth to her first son Jean Monet in 1867. To escape the Franco-Prussian War, the family moved to London in 1870, then returned to France, settling in France, in Argenteuil, a navigation centre on the Seine that attracted many other Impressionist painters.
The term Impressionism was coined in reference to the title of his painting Print, Sun Lift (Print, Dawn), which was exhibited in 1874 during the first independent exhibition organized by the small circle of Impressionist painters.
This exhibition, therefore, energized it as an alternative to the dogmatic Paris Salon. Thus, 1874 is a decisive year for the birth of the Impressionist movement and defines Monet as one of its creators. Despite criticism, the Impressionists would produce six exhibitions in 1882.
In 1876, Monet met Ernest and Alice Hoschedé, who quickly became close friends with the family. In 1878, his second son, Michel Monet, was born.
The Monet family moved to Vétheuil with the Hoschedé family. A year later, Camille died; years later, Alice Hoschedé became a widow. In this way, after widowing, the two friends met more than ever; Monet and Alice married in 1892.
In 1883 Monet moved to a house in Giverny, where he remained for 43 years, where he started a vast landscaping project, which included water lily ponds that will become the subject of his best-known works.
In 1899 he began painting water lilies; first in vertical views with a Japanese bridge as a central element and then in the series of large format paintings, theme that will become a constant for the next 20 years of his life.
“For me, a landscape does not exist in itself, as its appearance changes at every moment, but its surroundings give it life?Air and light, which vary constantly ??. -Claude Monet-
In 1907 he began to have vision problems and in 1923 the painter was almost completely blind. After cataract surgery, he had an improvement. In 1926, at the age of 86, he never stopped painting, died of lung cancer in his beloved Giverny.
Monet’s famous house had an exceptional garden with a pond, his heirs decided that the house would be left in the hands of the French Academy of Fine Arts, so it happened in 1966, thanks to the Claude Monet Foundation, the house and the gardens were opened to the public in 1980, after being remodeled.
In addition to Monet’s memories and other objects of his life, the house contains his collection of Japanese wood engravings, as a result, the house is one of Giverny’s two main attractions, which welcomes tourists from all over the world.
“My garden is my most beautiful work of art. “-Claude Monet-
Monet, a forerunner, leader and fierce defender of the Impressionist style, his ambition to document the French campaign led him to adopt a method of painting the same scenario several times, so I tried to capture the changing light and the passage of the These series were frequently presented in groups, for example, Los Almiare (1890-1891) and La Catedral de Rouen (1894).
His popularity exploded in the second half of the 20th century, when his works traveled the world in museum exhibitions that attracted unprecedented crowds, and popular items were marketed with images of his art.
Thus, Monet has become a reference in the art world, a master of brush and a declared lover of nature.