Claude Monet was a founder of French Impressionist painting, and the most consistent and prolific practitioner of the movement's philosophy of expressing one's perceptions before nature, especially as applied to plein air landscape painting. His popularity soared in the second half of the 20th century, when his works traveled the world in museum exhibitions that attracted record-breaking crowds.
Background
Claude Monet was born on January 14, 1840 in Paris, France. He was the second son of Claude Adolphe Monet and Louise Justine Aubrée Monet, both of them second-generation Parisians. In 1845, his family moved to Le Havre in Normandy. His father wanted him to go into the family's ship-chandling and grocery business, but Monet wanted to become an artist. His mother was a singer, and supported Monet's desire for a career in art.
Education
On April 1, 1851, Monet entered Le Havre secondary school of the arts, which he left at the age of sixteen.
Career
Monet’s first success as an artist came when he was fifteen, with the sale of caricatures that were carefully observed and well drawn. He worked at the free Académie Suisse, where he met his future wife Camille Pissarro, and he frequented the Brasserie des Martyrs, a gathering place for Gustave Courbet and other realists who constituted the vanguard of French painting in the 1850s. Monet's work there was interrupted by military service in Algeria during 1860 - 1862.
In 1862 he entered the studio of Charles Gleyre in Paris and met Renoir, Alfred Sisley, and Jean Frédéric Bazille. During 1863 and 1864 he periodically worked in the forest at Fontainebleau with the Barbizon artists Théodore Rousseau, Jean François Millet, and Daubigny, as well as with Corot. He consciously sought that variety and gradually developed a remarkable sensitivity for the subtle particulars of each landscape he encountered. Relatively few of Monet's canvases from the 1860s have survived, but the striking example of his early style is the "Terrace at the Seaside, Sainte-Adresse" painted in 1866. The painting contains a shimmering array of bright, natural colors, eschewing completely the somber browns and blacks of the earlier landscape tradition. In 1875 he also painted "Sunrise, Red Boats at Argenteuil", which was an outstanding example of the new style. In these paintings impressionism is essentially an illusionist style, albeit one that looks radically different from the landscapes of the Old Masters. The difference resides primarily in the chromatic vibrancy of Monet's canvases.
To capture the fleeting effects of light and color, however, Monet gradually learned that he had to paint quickly and to employ short brushstrokes loaded with individualized colors. This technique resulted in canvases that were charged with painterly activity; in effect, they denied the even blending of colors and the smooth, enameled surfaces to which most earlier painting had persistently subscribed. Yet, in spite of these differences, the new style was illusionistically intended; only the interpretation of what illusionism consisted of had changed. Monet, on the other hand, wanted to paint what he saw rather than what he intellectually knew. And he saw not separate leaves, but splashes of constantly changing light and color.
During the 1880s the impressionists began to dissolve as a cohesive group, although individual members continued to see one another and they occasionally worked together. Monet gradually gained critical and financial success during the late 1880s and the 1890s. This was due primarily to the efforts of Durand-Ruel, who sponsored one-man exhibitions of Monet's work as early as 1883 and who, in 1886, also organized the first large-scale impressionist group show to take place in the United States. Monet's painting during this period slowly gravitated toward a broader, more expansive and expressive style. In "Spring Trees by a Lake", painted in 1888, the entire surface vibrates electrically with shimmering light and color. Paradoxically, as his style matured and as he continued to develop the sensitivity of his vision, the strictly illusionistic aspect of his paintings began to disappear. The most celebrated of these series are the haystacks and the facades of Rouen Cathedral. In these works Monet painted his subjects from more or less the same physical position, allowing only the natural light and atmospheric conditions to vary from picture to picture.
That is, he "fixed" the subject matter, treating it like an experimental constant against which changing effects could be measured and recorded.
This technique reflects the persistence and devotion with which Monet pursued his study of the visible world. In this way his art established an important precedent for the development of abstract painting.
By 1899 his financial position was secure, and he began work on his famous series of water lily paintings. Still, Monet's late years were by no means easy. To complete them, he fought against his own failing eyesight and against the demands of a large-scale mural art for which his own past had hardly prepared him. At the time, the French statemen Georges Clemenceau who happened to also be Manet's friend asked Manet to create an artwork that would lift the country out of the gloom of the Great War where millions of people died. At first, Monet said he was too old and not up to the task, but eventually Clemenceau lifted him out of his mourning by encouraging him to create a glorious artwork - what Monet called "the great decoration." He continued to work on his water paintings right up until the end of his life. At the age of 86, Claude passed away.
Despite being baptized Catholic, Monet later became an atheist.
Views
Monet's early work is indebted to the Realists' interests in depicting contemporary subject matter, without idealization, and in painting outdoors in order to capture the fleeting qualities of nature. Inspired in part by Edouard Manet, Monet departed from the clear depiction of forms and linear perspective, which were prescribed by the established art of the time, and experimented with loose handling, bold color, and strikingly unconventional compositions. The emphasis in his pictures shifted from representing figures to depicting different qualities of light and atmosphere in each scene. In his later years, Monet also became increasingly sensitive to the decorative qualities of color and form.
Quotations:
"For me, a landscape does not exist in its own right, since its appearance changes at every moment; but the surrounding atmosphere brings it to life - the light and the air which vary continually. For me, it is only the surrounding atmosphere which gives subjects their true value."
"The light constantly changes, and that alters the atmosphere and beauty of things every minute."
"All I did was to look at what the universe showed me, to let my brush bear witness to it."
"Everyone discusses my art and pretends to understand, as if it were necessary to understand, when it is simply necessary to love."
Personality
Monet struggled with depression, poverty and illness throughout his life.
Connections
During the summer of 1870 Monet married Camille. Unfortunately, she died in 1879, and in 1892 he married Alice Hoschedé. He had two sons: Jean and Michel.