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Monet, with Pissaro, is recognized as being one of the creators of Impressionism, and he was the most convinced and consistent Impressionist of them all. From his earliest days as an artist, he was encouraged to trust his perceptions and the hardships he suffered never deterred him from that pursuit.
Claude
Monet was born in Paris on November 14, 1840 but all his impressions as
a child and adolescent were linked with Le Havre, the town to which his
family moved about 1845. His father had a grocery store there. In his
youth
he painted caricature portraits and exhibited them in the art supplies
store in which Eugène
Boudin
worked at the time. Eventually Boudin persuaded the young Monet to
paint
in the open air with him and become a landscape painter. His family was
not against his wish to become a painter, but his independent views,
criticism
towards academic art and refusal to enter a decent school of art led to
constant quarrels with his family. After finishing his military service
in Algeria (1860-1861) Monet attended the Académie Suisse and
there
made the acquaintance of Pissarro
and Cézanne. Later,
in
1862, he entered the Atelier Gleyre, where he met Bazille,
Renoir
and Sisley. In 1860s, the
young
artists frequented the Café Guerbois, a place often visited by
Emile
Zola and Edouard Manet.
An important turning point in Monet’s artistic career came in 1869,
when
he and Renoir painted La Grenouillere,
a floating restaurant at Bougival. The canvases they produced marked
the
emergence of a new artistic movement, Impressionism, called so later.
In 1870, Monet married his model Camille Doncieux
(died in 1879), who bore him his son Jean
(1868-1914);
in 1879 their second son, Michael, was born. Camille sat for many of
Monet's
pictures, e.g. The Walkers,
Women
in the Garden (all four are Camille),
The
Walk. Lady with a Parasol, La Japonaise,
and many others. During the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71 and a short
civil war (Commune) that followed, Monet lived in London and was
introduced
to Paul Durand-Ruel, a celebrated art dealer, who did much to
popularize
Impressionist works. In 1874, in an atmosphere of increasing hostility
on the part of official artistic circles, Monet and his friends formed
a group and exhibited on their own for the first time. One of his works
at this exhibition, Impression: Sunrise,
gave its name to the Impessionist movement.
The following years saw a flourishing of Impressionism. Monet took part
in the group’s exhibitions of 1874, 1876, 1877, 1879 and 1882. In those
years he created such masterpieces as La
Gare
Saint-Lazare and Rue
Saint-Denis,
Festivities of 30 June, 1878. However, his canvases found
few
buyers. Desperately poor, he constantly looked for places where life
was
cheaper, and lived at Argenteuil from 1873 to 1878, at Vétheuil
from 1879 to 1881, at Poissy in 1882, and at Giverny from 1883 until
his
death.
In the late 1880s, his painting began to attract the attention of both
the public and critics. Fame brought comfort and even wealth. During
that
period the artist was absorbed in painting landscapes in series: The
Rocks of Belle-Ile (1886), Cliffs
at Belle-Ile (1886), Poplars
on
the Bank of the River Epte (1890), Poplars
on the Banks of the Epte (1891), Poplars
on the Bank of the River Epte (1891). Light is always the
‘principal
person’ in Monet’s landscape, and since he was always aiming at seizing
an escaping effect, he adopted a habit of painting the same subject
under
different conditions of light, at different times of day. In this way
he
painted a series of views, all of the same subject, but all different
in
color and lightning.
In 1890, Monet bought the property at Giverny and began work on the
series
of haystacks, which he pursued for two years. Monet painted the stacks
in sunny and gray weather, in fog and covered with snow: Haystack,
Snow Effects, Morning (1890), Haystack.
End of the Summer. Morning. (1891), Haystack
at the Sunset near Giverny (1891). In 1892 he married Alice
Hoschedé (died in 1911) his old friend.
Monet’s renowned series of the cathedral at Rouen seen under different
light effects was painted from a second-floor window above a shop
opposite
the façade. He made eighteen frontal views. Changing canvases
with
the light, Monet had followed the hours of the day from early morning
with
the façade in misty blue shadow, to the afternoon, when the
sunset,
disappearing behind the buildings of the city, weaves the weathered
stone
work into a strange fabric of burnt orange and blue: The
Rouen Cathedral. Portail. The Albaine Tower. 1893-1894, The
Rouen Cathedral at Noon (1894), The
Rouen Cathedral (1893-1894), The
Rouen Cathedral at Twilight (1894), The
Rouen Cathedral in the Evening (1894).
In 1899, Monet first turned to the subject of water lilies: The
White Water Lilies (1899), The
Japanese Bridge (1899), Water-Lilies
(1914), Water-Lilies
(c.1917),
Water-Lilies
(1917), the main theme of his later work. Fourteen large canvases of
his
Water lilies series, started in 1916, were bequeathed by him to the
State.
In 1927, shortly after the artist’s death, these canvases were placed
in
two oval rooms of the Musée de l’Orangerie in the Tuileries
Gardens.
Notes
Woman in the Garden (Saint-Adresse). The lady in this painting is Marguerite Lecadre, one of Monet’s relatives, and the garden, the Lecadre family garden at Sainte-Adresse (a suburb of Le Havre).
Frederic Bazille (1841-1870) French painter, a very gifted representative of early impressionism; KIA during Franco-Prussian War; friend of Monet, Renoir, and Sisley. The friends often sat for pictures of each other, thus Bazille was the model for all men figures in the picture The Picnic by Monet.
Bibliography:
Claude Monet. by Ye. Georgievskaya. M. 1968.
Claude Monet. Paintings in Soviet Museums. Aurora. Leningrad.
1984.
Claude Monet. by V. Kulakov. Moscow. 1989.
Monet's
Years at Giverny: Beyond Impressionism by Daniel
Wildenstein,
Daniel Wildenstien, James N. Wood (Introduction), Charles S. Moffett.
Abradale
Press, 1995.
Monet:
Nature into Art by John House. Yale Univ Pr, 1988.
Monet:
Or the Triumph of Impressionism by Daniel Wildenstein,
Gilles
Neret (Editor). TASCHEN America Llc, 1999.
Monet
(Art and Ideas) by Carla Rachman. Phaidon Press Inc., 1998.
Secret's
of Monet's Garden: Bringing the Beauty of Monet's Style to Your Own
Garden
by Derek Fell (Photographer). Friedman/Fairfax Publishing.