5 of 13

Write now Article Tools

Claude Monet is considered the founder of the "Impressionist Painting", with a new relation between nature and painting, just with his artwork of 1872; "Impression. Soleil levant" ("Impressions. Rising sun") that gave the name to this new form of painting.

He was born on 1840 in Paris, but he lived in Le Havre during his childhood, when he begun to draw caricatures, until he met Eugene Boudin who taught him the art of the landscape painting, following the Dutch tradition.

In 1859, he come back in Paris, where he studied in the Academie Suisse and met Camille Pissarro.

After the military service in Algeria, he come back to Le Havre, where he started again painting with Boudin.
Then, again in Paris, he met Pierre-Auguste Renoir in the M.G. Gleyre's atelier and other important painters of that time who appreciated much Eduard Manet's "Le Dejuner sur l'herbe", exposed at the "Salon des Refuses".

Monet was fascinated by the painting of the figures "en plein air" and the "Women in the garden" (1866, Paris, Jeu-de-Paume Museum), but he remained still inspired to Gustave Courbet, whose style he imitated while painting live in the Fountainbleau Forest, near Paris. During these years, he painted many landscapes in Paris and along the Seine River banks, like "La Grenouilliere" (1862, New York, Metropolitan Museum), with a study of the light reflexes on the water. These works can be considered his first "impressionist" paintings, also before the "Impression" already mentioned above.

Monet studied thoroughly the laws of the complementary colours and of the light-colour by means of infinite variations on the same subject, like in the series dedicated to the "Bridges at Argenteuil", the "Snowfalls", the "Gardens", the "Saint-Nazaire Station" and the "Beaches and cliffs at Etretat", that can be seen in Paris, Jeu-de-Paume Museum, in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, US and in the Musee des Beaux Arts, Lyon, France and that were painted from 1874 to 1883.

Monet's cultural formation wasn't as refined as that of Manet or Degas, but he
was impressed by the works of the English Williams Turner and John Constable, whom he met in London, in 1870.

Very deep was also his interest for photography, related to his personal research: the study of what "impressed" the retina of our eyes. According to Monet, the painters mustn't make distinctions between senses and mind, but identify themselves with the subject, to better know it. These ideas were the base of the "Fauvism" and "Expressionism" and also of the "Informal Art", after the II W.W..

After 1889, Monet begun the painting series of the "action painting" (many of these artworks can be admired today in the Jeu-de-Paume Museum, Paris). These series are: "The haystacks", the "Views of the Thames" (1990-09), the "Venice views" (1908-12) and, above all, the "Rouen Cathedral" (1892-94), in which Monet was inspired by the lights effects during the day on the facade of Rouen's cathedral. His latest series is that of the "Water lilies", painted from 1909 to 1926, until Claude Monet died at Giverny, France.

Learn more about this author, Aldo Bonincontro.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.

Add your voice

Know something about Biography: Claude Monet?
We want to hear your view. Write now!