by Christa Nwokedi

Created on: November 05, 2009

Claude Monet, the outstanding and best known Impressionist painter, was born on November 14, 1840, in Paris. He was the second son of Claude Adolphe Monet and Louise Justine Aubre Monet. His parents moved in order to pursue their business interest to Le Havre in 1845. There Claude started an art secondary school in 1951. He said about himself: "I was born undisciplineable, I equated my college life with that of a prison and could not resolve to spend my time there..", But he spent his time to produce his first charcoal caricatures, which he sold for a few francs; at fifteen, he was known as a caricaturist all over Le Havre. He received his first drawing lessons from

Jacques-Franois Ochard. His fellow artist Eugne Boudin became his mentor and taught him the use of oil paints, and "en plein air" (outdoor) techniques for painting. When his mother died in 1857, Claude left school, traveled regularly to Paris to visit the Louvre, and meet other young painters, among them Pissarro before his rebellion time, who still painted in Corots style and Claude followed suit. In 1961 he committed to a seven year service in the First Regiment of African Light Cavalry in Algeria. He had two pleasurable years in Algeria but contracted typhoid fever and left the army. Soon after he returned to Paris, became a student of Charles Gleyre, met Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Frdric Bazille, and Alfred Sisley. Together the artists explored and shared the new approaches to art of the mid 19th century. It was the age of industrialization, or as historian Nikolas Pevsner named it the "age of railway," an epoch centered on business. At the same time Historism was challenged by the aggressive Italian movement of futurism; political ideas of socialism and communism evolved, the way to realism in art was opened, and practiced by artists like Edouard Manet (Luncheon on the Grass, 1863, Muse d'Orsay), Gustave Gourbet (The Atelier, 1855, Muse de Louvre, Paris), and Adolf Menzel (Rolling mill, 1875, National Gallery Berlin)

Claude Monet and his group of friends put to practice the effects of light (en plein air), emphasised on light in its changing qualities, broken color, rapid brush strokes, open composition, and included movement as a crucial element of human perception and experience - all typical characteristics which later became the main features of Impressionism.

Between 1866 and 1869 Monet exhibited the paintings The "Woman in the Green Dress" (La femme la robe verte), "The Woman in the Garden",

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