Claude Monet Biography

Claude Monet was the founder of Impressionist form of painting and throughout his life he produced many masterpieces. He was born in Paris on November 14, 1840. When he was five, the family moved to Le Harve, in Normandy where his father opened a grocery store. As he became older, his father wanted Claude to follow in his footsteps, but Claude wanted to become an artist. In 1851, at the age of 11, he began his studies at the Le Havre Secondary School of the Arts. Here he rapidly gained a name for himself with his charcoal caricatures, which he sold for 20 francs. He started taking lessons from Jacques-Francois Ochard and was introduced to oil paints by Boudin. Following the death of his mother in 1857, he went to live with his aunt.

He traveled to Paris where he saw the paintings of great artists at the Louvre and started to bring his supplies with him to copy the works, as he had seen others do. During this time he met Edouard Manet, who would later become one of his fellow painters. He joined the African Light Infantry in 1861 and spent two years in Algeria. However, he was unable to serve his commitment of seven years because he contracted typhoid. He agreed to take art at the university in order to be released from the army.

He was disillusioned with the art courses at the university and chose to study under Charles Gleyre. Here he met Renoir, Bazille and Sisley, all of whom shared his approach of painting the effects of light in broken color and rapid brushstrokes. This was the beginning of Impressionism in art.

He married Camile Doncieux and the couple took refuge in England during the Franco-Prussian War where he studied the landscape paintings of John Constable and Joseph Turner. He moved to Zaandam in 1871 and created 25 paintings. After visiting Amsterdam, he returned to France to live in the village of Argenteuil. It is here that he created some of his best work. His painting, Impression, Sunrise, was hung in the first Impressionist art exhibition in 1874. This painting can still be seen at the Musee Marmottan- Monet in Paris.

Camile passed away in 1879 and after this Monet was grief-stricken. However, during this period he created works that have been deemed as some of the best paintings of the 19th century. Monet and Camile had two sons and after her death Alice Hoschede helped him to raise the children, along with six of her own. They later married and became one family.

In 1883, Monet moved his now large family to Giverny, where he had a barn that he used as a studio. The landscape provided him with the scenery for his paintings. He worked on series paintings through the 1880’s and 1890’s. He also traveled to the Mediterranean where he painted landscape scenes as well. His sight began to fail in the early part of the 20th century and he underwent two surgeries to remove cataracts from his eyes. He died of lung cancer in December 1925 at the age of 86.