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attention to detail, which was the focus of the realism movement. Compared with realism, Impressionism had a coarse, unfinished look. Yet it was that very quality of immediacy that could dissolve a flower's bloom into a pool of iridescent light.

Monet himself used a palette of light, bright colors to capture the optical effects created by natural light on the landscape, paying little attention to details, using instead highly visible, sketchy, "undescriminating" brushwork to capture a scene quickly. It was sensitivity to the changing quality, the transformative effect of light that Claude Monet was able to capture in his finest works of art.

MONET'S WORK AND LIFE

Once the Impressionists went their own ways, each to explore their own style and subject matter, Claude Monet began to focus seriously on his study of light. While others were painting still life and models in studios, Monet was en plein air, savoring the outdoors and the impact light has on objects. From 1871-1878, for example, Monet lived in Argentuil, a Parisian suburb along the Seine River, where he had a studio aboard a boat. There he painted 170 canvases. Rarely taking the boat far, he instead moored in quiet stretches of the river, painting the light on water or capturing sailing regattas.

In 1883, Claude Monet moved to Giverny, where he painted some of his most famous paintings, and worked until his death. Giverny, just north of Paris, is where he developed and expanded the land to create his own water gardens, which were the subject of his painting for many years. The lily ponds and flower gardens gave birth to some of his most famous paintinga. "The Waterlily Pond" (1899), for example, is one of his most famous works, and is a bedazzling work of light and color, nearly abstract with its brilliant greens and yellows.

Where before, Monet had spent years studying the elusive quality of light through his series paintings (for example, series of haystacks or the light falling on Rouen Cathedral), now his focus were the gardens, plants, water, and Japanese bridge of Giverny. Claude Monet was an artist, a master of light, season, and time of day, capturing each in his Impressionist paintings. He worked steadily, despite failing health, in Giverny until his death in 1926.

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