Painter, born in Paris, France. He spent his youth in Le Havre, where he met Boudin, who encouraged him to work in the open air. Moving to Paris, he associated with Renoir, Degas, Pissarro, and Sisley, and exhibited with them at the first Impressionist Exhibition in 1874; one of his works at this exhibition, Impression: soleil levant (Impression: Sunrise, 1872, Paris), gave the name to the movement. Later he worked much in Argenteuil. With Pissarro, Monet is recognized as being one of the creators of Impressionism, and he was one of its most consistent exponents. He visited England, The Netherlands, and Venice, and spent his life expressing his instinctive way of seeing the most subtle nuances of colour, atmosphere, and light in landscape. Apart from many sea and river scenes, he also executed several series of paintings of subjects under different aspects of light, such as Haystacks (18901, Chicago). A year after his death, the almost abstract Water Lilies, series was installed in two specially designed oval-shaped rooms in the Musée de l'Orangerie, Paris.
Claude Monet also known as Oscar-Claude Monet or Claude Oscar Monet (November 14, 1840 – December 5, 1926) was a French Impressionist painter.
Early life
Monet was born to Adolphe and Louise-Justine Monet, both of them second-generation Parisians, of 90 Rue Laffitte, in the 9th arrondissement of Paris, but his family moved in 1845 to Le Havre in Normandy when he was five. His father wanted him to go into the family (grocery store) business, but Claude Monet wanted to become an artist.
On the first of April 1851 Monet entered the Le Havre secondary school. Monet also undertook his first drawing lessons from Jacques-Francois Ochard, a former student of Jacques-Louis David (1748 - 1825). Boudin taught Monet en plein air (outdoor) techniques for painting.
Paris
When Monet travelled to Paris to visit The Louvre, he witnessed painters copying from the old masters. Monet, having brought his paints and other tools with him, would instead go and sit by a window and paint what he saw. Monet was in Paris for several years and met several friends who were painters.
In June of 1861 Monet joined the First Regiment of African Light Cavalry in Algeria for two years of a seven-year commitment, but upon his contracting typhoid his aunt Madame Lecadre intervened to get him out of the army if he agreed to complete an art course at a university. It is possible that the Dutch painter Johan Barthold Jongkind, whom Monet knew, may have prompted his aunt on this matter. Disillusioned with the traditional art taught at universities, in 1862 Monet was a student of Charles Gleyre in Paris, where he met Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Frederic Bazille, and Alfred Sisley.
Monet's 1866 Camille or The Woman in the Green Dress (La Femme à la Robe Verte), which brought him recognition, was one of many works featuring his future wife, Camille Doncieux.
Franco-Prussian War
During the Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871), Monet took refuge in England to avoid the conflict. While there he studied the works of John Constable and Joseph Mallord William Turner, both of whose landscapes would serve to inspire Monet's innovations in the study of color.
From 1871 to 1878 Monet lived at Argenteuil, a village on the Seine near Paris, and here were painted some of his best known works.
Upon returning to France, in 1872 (or 1873) he painted Impression, Sunrise (Impression: soleil levant) depicting a Le Havre landscape.
Later life
In 1870, Monet and Doncieux married and in 1873 moved into a house in Argenteuil near the Seine River. Madame Monet died of tuberculosis in 1879.
Alice Hoschedé decided to help Monet by bringing up his two children together with her own. Monet and Alice Hoschedé married in 1892.
In the 1880s and 1890s, Monet began "series" painting: paintings of one subject in varying light and weather conditions.
Monet was exceptionally fond of painting controlled nature: his own garden in Giverny, with its water lilies, pond, and bridge.
Between 1883 and 1908, Monet traveled to the Mediterranean, where he painted landmarks, landscapes, and seascapes, such as Bordighera. He painted an important series of paintings in Venice, Italy, and in London he painted two important series - views of Parliament and views of Charing Cross Bridge. During World War I Monet painted a series of Weeping Willow trees as homage to the French fallen soldiers. Cataracts formed on Monet's eyes, for which he underwent two surgeries in 1923.
Death
Monet died December 5, 1926 at the age of 86 and is buried in the Giverny church cemetery.
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