Everything about Monet totally explained
Claude Monet (
French ) also known as
Oscar-Claude Monet or
Claude Oscar Monet (
November 14,
1840 –
December 5,
1926) 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. The term Impressionism is derived from the title of his painting
Impression, Sunrise.
Early life
Monet was born on
November 14,
1840 on the fifth floor of 45 rue Laffitte, in the ninth arrondissement of
Paris. He was the second son of Claude-Adolphe and Louise-Justine Aubrée Monet, both of them second-generation Parisians. On
May 20,
1841, he was baptized into the local church parish, Notre-Dame-de-Lorette as Oscar-Claude.
On
28 January,
1857 his mother died. He was 16 years old when he left school, and went to live with his widowed childless aunt, Marie-Jeanne Lecadre.
Paris
When Monet traveled to Paris to visit
The Louvre, he witnessed painters copying from the old masters. Monet, having brought his paints and other tools with him, would instead go and sit by a window and paint what he saw. Monet was in Paris for several years and met several painters who would become friends and fellow impressionists. One of those friends was
Édouard Manet.
In June of 1861 Monet joined the First Regiment of African Light Cavalry in
Algeria for two years of a seven-year commitment, but upon his contracting typhoid his aunt Marie-Jeanne Lecadre intervened to get him out of the army if he agreed to complete an art course at a university. It is possible that the Dutch painter
Johan Barthold Jongkind, whom Monet knew, may have prompted his aunt on this matter. Disillusioned with the traditional art taught at universities, in 1862 Monet became a student of
Charles Gleyre in Paris, where he met
Pierre-Auguste Renoir,
Frédéric Bazille, and
Alfred Sisley. Together they shared new approaches to art, painting the effects of light
en plein air with broken color and rapid brushstrokes, in what later came to be known as
Impressionism.
Monet's
Camille or
The Woman in the Green Dress (
La Femme à la Robe Verte), painted in 1866, brought him recognition, and was one of many works featuring his future wife,
Camille Doncieux; she was the model for the figures in
The Women in the Garden of the following year, as well as for
On the Bank of the Seine, Bennecourt, 1868, pictured here. Shortly thereafter Doncieux became pregnant and gave birth to their first child,
Jean. In 1868, due to financial reasons, Monet attempted suicide by throwing himself into the
Seine.
Franco-Prussian War, Impressionism, and Argenteuil
After the outbreak of the
Franco-Prussian War (
July 19 1870), Monet took refuge in
England in September 1870. While there, he studied the works of
John Constable and
Joseph Mallord William Turner, both of whose landscapes would serve to inspire Monet's innovations in the study of color. In the Spring of 1871, Monet's works were refused to be included in the Royal Academy exhibition.
In May 1871 he left London to live in
Zaandam,. He also had a first visit to nearby
Amsterdam. In October or November 1871 he returned to France. Monet lived from December 1871 to 1878 at
Argenteuil, a village on the Seine near Paris, and here he painted some of his best known works. In 1874, he briefly returned to Holland.
In 1872 (or 1873), he painted
Impression, Sunrise (Impression: soleil levant) depicting a
Le Havre landscape. It hung in the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874 and is now displayed in the
Musée Marmottan-Monet, Paris. From the painting's title, art critic
Louis Leroy coined the term "
Impressionism", which he intended as disparagement but which the Impressionists appropriated for themselves.
Monet and
Camille Doncieux had married just before the war (
June 28 1870)
Gallery of early paintings
Image:Claude Monet - Camille.JPG|The Woman in the Green Dress, Camille Doncieux, 1866, Kunsthalle Bremen.
Image:Claude Monet - Le dejeuner sur l’herbe.JPG|Le dejeuner sur l'herbe, 1865-1866, The Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow.
Image:Monet dejeunersurlherbe.jpg|Le dejeuner sur lherbe, (right section), with Gustave Courbet, 1865-1866, Musée d'Orsay, Paris.
Image:Claude Monet 007.jpg|Flowering Garden at Sainte-Adresse, 1866, Musée d'Orsay, Paris.
Image:Claude Monet 022.jpg|Woman in a Garden, 1867, Hermitage, St. Petersburg
Image:Claude Monet - Jardin à Sainte-Adresse.jpg|Jardin à Sainte-Adresse, 1867, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City
Image:Claude Monet 048.jpg|Seine Basin with Argenteuil, 1872, Musée d'Orsay, Paris.
Image:Claude Monet - Jean Monet on his Hobby Horse.jpg|Jean Monet on his Hobby Horse, 1872, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Image:Claude Monet - The Artist's House at Argenteuil.jpg|The Artist's House at Argenteuil, 1873, The Art Institute of Chicago
Image:Claude Monet 037.jpg|Poppies Blooming, 1873, Musée d'Orsay, Paris.
Image:Claude Monet-Madame Monet en costume japonais.jpg|Madame Monet in a Japanese Costume, 1875, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Image:Claude Monet 011.jpg|Woman with a Parasol, (Camille and Jean Monet), 1875, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.
Image:Claude Monet Camille au métier.jpg|Camille Monet at Work, 1875, Barnes Foundation, Merion, PA
Image:Claude Monet - Argenteuil.jpg|Argenteuil, 1875, Musée de l'Orangerie, Paris.
Image:Claude Monet 003.jpg|Saint Lazare Train Station, Paris, 1877, The Art Institute of Chicago
Image:Monet-montorgueil.JPG|Rue Montorgueil, 1878, Musée d'Orsay, Paris.
Image:Claude Monet - Camille Monet sur son lit de mort.JPG|Camille Monet, on her deathbed, 1879, Musée d'Orsay, Paris.
Image:Vétheuil dans le brouillard.jpg|Vétheuil in the Fog, 1879, Musée Marmottan-Monet, Paris.
Image:Claude Monet 053.jpg|Street near Vétheuil in Winter, 1879
Image:Monet, Lavacourt-Sunshine-and-Snow.jpg|Lavacourt: Sunshine and Snow, 1879-1880 National Gallery, London
Later life
After several difficult months following the death of Camille on
5 September 1879, a grief-stricken Monet (resolving never to be mired in poverty again) began in earnest to create some of his best paintings of the
19th century. During the early 1880s Monet painted several groups of landscapes and seascapes in what he considered to be campaigns to document the French countryside. His extensive campaigns evolved into his series' paintings.
Camille Monet had become ill with
tuberculosis in 1876. Pregnant with her second child she gave birth to Michel Monet in March 1878. In 1878 the Monets temporarily moved into the home of
Ernest Hoschedé, (1837-1891), a wealthy department store owner and patron of the arts. Both families then shared a house in
Vétheuil during the summer. After her husband (
Ernest Hoschedé) was bankrupted, and left in 1878 for
Belgium, in September 1879, and while Monet continued to live in the house in Vétheuil;
Alice Hoschedé helped Monet to raise his two sons, Jean and Michel, by taking them to
Paris to live alongside her own six children. They were Blanche, Germaine, Suzanne, Marthe, Jean-Pierre, and Jacques. In the spring of 1880 Alice Hoschedé and all the children left Paris and rejoined Monet still living in the house in Vétheuil. In 1881 all of them moved to
Poissy which Monet hated. From the doorway of the little train between Vernon and Gasny he discovered Giverny. In
April 1883 they moved to
Vernon, then to a house in
Giverny,
Eure, in
Upper Normandy, where he planted a large garden where he painted for much of the rest of his life. Following the death of her estranged husband, Alice Hoschedé married Claude Monet in 1892.
During
World War I, in which his younger son Michel served and his friend and admirer
Clemenceau led the French nation, Monet painted a series of
Weeping Willow trees as homage to the
French fallen soldiers. Cataracts formed on Monet's eyes, for which he underwent two surgeries in 1923. The paintings done while the cataracts affected his vision have a general reddish tone, which is characteristic of the vision of cataract victims. It may also be that after surgery he was able to see certain
ultraviolet wavelengths of light that are normally excluded by the lens of the eye, this may have had an effect on the colors he perceived. After his operations he even repainted some of these paintings, with bluer water lilies than before the operation.
Gallery of later paintings
Image:Claude Monet 029.jpg|Hut of the Douaniers with Varengeville, 1882, Museum Boymans-van Beuningen, Rotterdam
Image:Claude Monet The Cliffs at Etretat.jpg|The Cliffs at Etretat, 1885, Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts
Image:Claude Monet 050.jpg|Still-Life with Anemones, 1885
Image:Claude Monet Pyramides Port Coton.jpg|The Port Coton „Pyramids, 1886
Image:Claude Monet - Graystaks I.JPG|Haystacks, (sunset), 1890-1891, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Image:Claude Monet - Poplars, Philadelphia.JPG|Poplars, (autumn), 1891, Philadelphia Museum of Art
Image:Claude Monet - Rouen Cathedral, Facade (Sunset).JPG|Rouen Cathedral, Facade (sunset), 1892-1894, Musée Marmottan-Monet, Paris
Image:Claude Monet - Branch of the Seine near Giverny.JPG|Branch of the Seine near Giverny, 1897
Image:Claude Monet Bridge over a Pool of Water Lilies.jpg|Bridge over a Pool of Water Lilies, 1899, Metropolitan Museum of Art
Image:Claude Monet 040.jpg|Pappeln on the Epte, 1900, National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh
Image:Claude Monet 025.jpg|Garden Path, 1902
Image:Claude Monet Houses of Parliament.jpg|Houses of Parliament, London, c. 1904, Musée Marmottan-Monet, Paris
Image:Claude Monet - Water-Lilies (Bridgestone Museum).jpg|Water Lilies, 1907, Bridgestone Museum of Art, Tokyo
Image:Claude Monet 039.jpg|Palace From Mula, Venice, 1908, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.
Image:Claude Monet Water Lilies Toledo.jpg|Water Lilies, 1914-1917, Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, Ohio
Image:Claude Monet Nympheas Marmottan.jpg|Nympheas, c. 1916, Musée Marmottan-Monet, Paris
Image:Monet Water Lilies 1916.jpg|Water Lilies, 1916, The National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo
Image:Claude Monet, Water-Lily Pond and Weeping Willow.JPG|Water-Lily Pond and Weeping Willow, 1916-1919
Image:Claude Monet Weeping Willow.jpg|Weeping Willow, 1918-1919, Kimball Art Museum, Fort Worth
Image:Claude Monet 044.jpg|Sea-Roses (Yellow Nirwana), 1920, The National Gallery, London
Death
Monet died of lung cancer on
December 5,
1926 at the age of 86 and is buried in the
Giverny church cemetery. Monet had insisted that the occasion be simple; thus about fifty people attended the ceremony.
His famous home and garden with its waterlily pond were bequeathed by his heirs to the French Academy of Fine Arts (part of the
Institut de France) in 1966. Through the
Fondation Claude Monet, the home and gardens were opened for visit in 1980, following refurbishment. In addition to souvenirs of Monet and other objects of his life, the home contains his collection of
Japanese woodcut prints. The home is one of the two main attractions of
Giverny, which hosts tourists from all over the world.
Posthumous sales
In 2004,
London, the Parliament, Effects of Sun in the Fog (Londres, le Parlement, trouée de soleil dans le brouillard) (1904), sold for
U.S. $20.1 million. In 2006, the journal
Proceedings of the Royal Society published a paper providing evidence that these were painted in situ at
St Thomas' Hospital over the river
Thames.
Falaises près de Dieppe (Cliffs near Dieppe) has been stolen on two separate occasions. Once in 1998 (in which the museum's curator was convicted of the theft and jailed for five years along with two accomplices) and most recently in August 2007. It has yet to be recovered.
Monet's "Le Pont du chemin de fer a Argenteuil," an
1873 painting of a
railway bridge spanning the
Seine near
Paris was bought by an anonymous telephone bidder for a record $ 41.4 million at
Christie's auction in
New York on
May 6, 2008. The previous record for his painting stood at $ 36.5 million.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Monet'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://claude_monet.totallyexplained.com">Claude Monet Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
