Claude Monet Biography

Oscar-Claude Monet (14 November 1840 – 5 December 1926) was a French painter and the pioneer of impressionist painting. His endeavours to represent nature as he saw it are viewed as a significant predecessor to modernism. He was the most constant and prolific practitioner of impressionism's theory of conveying one's perceptions before nature, particularly as applied to plein air (outside) landscape painting, during the course of his long career. The word "Impressionism" comes from Monet's painting Impression, soleil levant, which he displayed in 1874 in the first Salon des Refusés ("exhibition of rejects"), which he and his partners started as an alternative to the Salon.

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Claude Monet Brief Biography

Full Name- Oscar-Claude Monet

Born- 14 November 1840; Paris, France

Died- 5 December 1926 (aged 86); Giverny, France

Nationality- French

Known for- Painter

Notable work- Impression, Sunrise; Rouen Cathedral series; London Parliament series; Water Lilies; Haystacks; Poplars

Movement- Impressionism

Patron(s)- Gustave Caillebotte, Ernest Hoschedé, Georges Clemenceau

Birth and Childhood

As per Oscar Claude Monet biography, Claude Monet was born on the fifth floor of 45 rue Laffitte in the 9th arrondissement of Paris on November 14, 1840. He was the second son of second-generation Parisians Claude Adolphe Monet and Louise Justine Aubrée Monet. Oscar-Claude was baptised on May 20, 1841, in the local parish church, Notre-Dame-de-Lorette, although his family called him Oscar. Monet has become an atheist after being baptised Catholic.

His family relocated to Normandy's Le Havre in 1845. Monet's father, a wholesale merchant, encouraged him to join the family's shipping and grocery company, but he aspired to be an artist. Monet's mother had been a singer who encouraged him to pursue a career in art.

He began secondary school for the arts in Le Havre on April 1, 1851. He was an uninterested student who, despite demonstrating artistic ability from an early age, began drawing caricatures and portraits of friends for money at the age of 15. Jacques-François Ochard, a former student of Jacques-Louis David, gave him his first drawing lessons.

Around 1858, he encountered fellow artist Eugène Boudin, who encouraged Monet's technique development, taught him "en plein air" (outside) painting techniques, and took him on painting expeditions. Boudin was regarded by Monet as his master, to whom he owed "everything" for his later accomplishments. His mother died in 1857. He dropped out of school when he was sixteen years old. He lived with his father and aunt, Marie-Jeanne Lecadre, who would be a supporter of Monet's early artistic career.

Claude Monet Bio- The Life and Works of Monet

The Master of Light and Color: "Impression, Sunrise"- The society's exhibition in April 1874 was innovative. "Impression, Sunrise" (1873), one of Monet's most well-known pieces in the exhibition, portrayed Le Havre's harbour in a morning fog. Critics coined the term "Impressionists'' to describe a group of artists whose work resembles sketches rather than finished paintings. 

While the phrase was intended to be disparaging, it seemed appropriate. Monet and his contemporaries were moving away from the blended colours and uniformity of traditional art in order to convey the essence of the natural world using bright colours and bold, quick brushstrokes. Monet also used industrial aspects into his landscapes, advancing the style and making it more current. Following the Impressionists' first display in 1874, Monet began exhibiting alongside them and continued through the 1880s.

Around this time, Monet's personal life was marred by adversity. During her second pregnancy (their second son, Michel, was born in 1878), his wife became unwell, and she continued to suffer. On her deathbed, Monet made a portrait of her. The Monets moved in with Ernest and Alice Hoschede and their six children shortly before she died.

Following Camille's death, Monet painted the Ice Drift series, a dark series of paintings. He got closer and closer to Alice, and the two were romantically linked at some point. Ernest lived in Paris for most of his life, and he and Alice never divorced. In 1883, Monet and Alice relocated to Giverny with their respective children, a location which would provide a source of immense inspiration for the artist and also serve as his final residence. Monet and Alice married in 1892, after Ernest died. During the late 1880s and 1890s, Monet achieved financial and critical success, and he began the serial paintings so that he would become famous. He enjoyed painting outside in the gardens that he helped to establish in Giverny.

During the late 1880s and 1890s, Monet achieved financial and critical success, and he began the serial paintings so that he would become famous. He enjoyed painting outside in the gardens that he helped to establish in Giverny. He was particularly taken with the water lilies in the pond, and he painted numerous series of them over the course of his life; the Japanese-style bridge that spans the pond was also the subject of a few works. (To commemorate the Armistice, Monet donated 12 of his water lily paintings to the French people in 1918.)

Monet would travel to acquire new sources of inspiration on occasion, as per monet biography. He rented a room across from the Rouen Cathedral in northwestern France in the early 1890s and produced a sequence of works centred on the structure. Monet's concern with the effects of light led him to paint the building in various light conditions, including dawn, midday, and dreary weather. Aside from the cathedral, Monet painted a variety of subjects over and over, attempting to capture the mood of a particular time of day on a landscape or location. Around this period, he also focused on the effects of light on the shapes of haystacks and poplar trees in two other painting series. Monet visited London in 1900, when the Thames River drew his artistic attention.

Later Years and Death

Claude Monet's biography tells that Monet grappled with depression in his later years, as he had in other periods of his life. "Age and chagrin have worn me out. My life was nothing but a failure, and all that's left for me to do is trash my paintings before I disappear," he wrote to a friend. Despite his misery, he kept working on his paintings until his death.

On December 5, 1926, Monet died at his house in Giverny. "My only credit rests in having painted straight in front of nature, attempting to represent my impressions of the most transitory aspects," wrote Monet at one point. Most art historians believe Monet did far more than this: he contributed to transform the world of painting by challenging prior conventions. Monet paved the way for more abstraction in painting by dissolving forms in his works, and he is recognised with inspiring other artists like Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, and Willem de Kooning. The Claude Monet Foundation has been housed in Monet's Giverny home since 1980. 

Legacy

Wildenstein described Monet's corpus of work as "so vast that its very ambition and diversity undermines our grasp of its significance." His paintings, created at Giverny while suffering from cataracts, have been credited for bridging the gap between Impressionism and twentieth-century art, as well as modern abstract art. His subsequent works influenced Objective abstraction in a "major" way. Following a formative encounter at Giverny, Ellsworth Kelly developed Tableau Vert, a tribute to Monet's masterpieces created there (1952). Monet had an influence on Bazille, Renoir, Sisley, and Pissarro, and has been dubbed a "intermediary" between tradition and modernism (his work has been studied in relation to postmodernism).

Monet has become the most well-known of the Impressionists, having "exerted a significant influence on late-nineteenth-century art" as a consequence of his efforts to the movement. Following protracted discussions with the French government, 27 panel paintings were presented in the Orangerie in May 1927. Few people visited the exhibition because his later works were mostly overlooked by artists, art historians, critics, and the general public.

Monet's later works were "rediscovered" in the 1950s by Abstract Expressionists and those close by, such as Clement Greenberg, who employed comparable canvases and were disinterested in the war's stark and polemical art. André Masson's essay from 1952 influenced the public's perception of the paintings and sparked enthusiasm in 1956-1957. The Water Lilies paintings they had purchased were destroyed in a fire at the Museum of Modern Art the following year. Some institutions found it difficult to frame Monet's later works due to their huge scale, therefore they changed the framing.

Claude Monet Facts

• His artistic ability was seen at a very early age.

• He served as a soldier in algeria.

• He jumped into the seine because he was so frustrated with life.

• His meta painting was created by Renoir.