Claude Monet - founder of Impressionism

We owe countless postcard motifs to this painter, it is not without reason, because many of his pictures are simply incredibly beautiful.

Claude Monet ventured away from the art recognized at the time, which presented clear forms and linear perspectives, and instead explored free handling, lively colors and surprisingly unconventional arrangements.

In every scenario of his impressionist works of art, Claude Monet shifted the focus away from the representation of people and to the presentation of certain aspects of light and mood . In his last years of life, Monet rely more on the ornamental elements of color and shape.

Claude Monet shortly

Is Claude Monet (1840–1926) the last great champion of the 19th century or the first great painter of the 20th century? Rodin, his innovative art embodies the transition from tradition to modernity. Monet, a painter of colors and nature, is primarily known as the leader of the impressionist school.

As an artist on the sidelines of academic teaching, he experienced a triumphal march of his name in the history of modern art at the beginning of the 20th century and was considered one of the pioneers of abstraction .

From today's perspective, Claude Monet is undoubtedly one of the most famous artists in art history. He is considered the leader of the impressionist movement. His long life enabled him to create a rich work that developed according to his visual experiences.

Due to its compositions that have been created in the open air, Claude Monet was interested in the treatment of natural light and colors.

He once said:

Color is my daily obsession, my joy and my agony. "

The French painter moved to the country in 1890. In Giverny he built a garden with a fascinating water landscape. Today the garden in which the famous water lily images were created is a tourist magnet.

Biography of Claude Monet: Early years

It took a long time for Monet's life to achieve a steadiness in which the creation of such beautiful pictures would have appeared adequately, in youth his life was so default and worried that he could have painted at most to compensate: Claude Monet was born in Paris in 1840 , but where the family had to move to Le Havre soon.

Already in addition to visiting the high school, the young Monet took sign lessons a cartoonist all over the city . When he was encouraged to take the first landscape at the age of 17 by a painter who was promoting him, the longing in Monet grew to grab the profession of painter.

Around 1858 Claude Monet met the Honfleurer painter Eugène Boudin (1824-1898). This meeting was crucial for Monet's career, who never stopped reaffirming that his appointment as a painter Boudin was thanks to. From then on, Monet's youthful landscapes illustrate the influence of the Marinemaler .

1856-1864: Academic training at Charles Gleyre

was refused to enter Thomas Couture At the academy, Monet made friends with the later impressionist painter Camille Pissarro (1830-1903).

First with his father's financial support, he was allowed to go to Paris and make the first learning experiences, but the parents' money was rationed when he decided in 1860 against the traditional École des Beaux arts and for the free painting school Académie Suisse.

The young man, who was drawn to compulsory in 1861, remained in Algeria for almost a year. After Monet was allowed to return the following year after he was infected with typhoid, he met the Dutch painter Johan Barthold Jongkind (1819-1891), who was supposed to have a big influence on his work.

In the same year, 1862, Claude Monet studied on the Ecole des Beaux-Art in Paris in the studio of Charles Gleyre (1806-1874). The latter trained many artists, some of whom became the great painters of Impressionism (Alfred Sisley, Frédéric Bazille, Auguste Renoir).

The lessons about antiquity had little weight for the young painters; Monet and his friends prefer to paint in the forest of Fontainebleau, on the land of the painter of the Barbizon school. Nevertheless, he exhibited in the salon and was noticed by Émile Zola .

Claude Monet did not agree with the academic art scheduled by his master and quickly left the studio. Honfleur with Boudin and Jongkind, who had a significant influence on his early work, to paint there.

All the time, Monet was dependent on the money of his family, which seemed to change when he was able to exhibit a flower still life in the urban artificial position in Rouen in 1864 and received several portrait orders from a benevolent shipowner.

1865-1866: First exhibitions in Paris

In 1865, Claude Monet founded a common studio in Paris with Frédéric Bazille and was able to accommodate several pictures in the Paris Salons , the most important art exhibitions of the time, 1865 and 1866.

The Paris Salon chose two of Monet's seaside pieces for the exhibition in 1865: mouth of the Seine near Honfleur (1865) and Le Pavé de Chailly (1865).

1866-1870: The Camille Doncieux model and financial difficulties

In 1866 Monet Camille Doncieux met, who became his favorite model. She posed in particular for The Woman in a Green Dress (1866), which was sent to the salon. The work received enthusiastic reviews.

But afterwards the works of Claude Monet were regularly rejected by the salon's jury, as well as that of his friends. At that time the painter was faced with great financial difficulties. Despite his financial problems, Monet married Camille Doncieux in 1870.

It should soon be shown that the maintenance of a studio is not inexpensive, and with the relationship with Camille Doncieux and the birth of his son Monet was increasingly financial difficulties.

Not only financially, Monet was not doing well in these years, he moved away from a wide variety of influences (including the realistic landscape painting of the School of Barbizon and the ever closer acquaintance with Édouard Manet ) in the choice of topics and sometimes from the Salon de Paris and thus also from commercial success. During this time he had to flee from creditors and needed the financial support of his family, friends and patrons.

1870-1871: Exile in London

It was only from 1870 that the leaf turned somewhat when Monet moved to London Franco-German war Paul Durand-Ruel , who acquired several paintings by Monet.

The Franco-German war broke out in 1870. In London in exile he also met his friend Pissarro. During this stay, he was able to admire the works of William Turner and John Constable , in which the treatment of light is essential. Above all, however, Monet met the American painter James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834-1903) and art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel (1831-1922), a glowing advocate of impressionistic painting.

In London, Monet painted views of London gardens and the Thames and further developed his technology ( boats in the Pool of London, 1871, oil on canvas, National Museum of Wales, Cardiff).

Monet's father died at the same time, with the inheritance he rented a house with a garden in Argenteuil and set up a boat as a studio, and for the first time Monet was able to enjoy a life in bourgeois prosperity.

In the 1870s, Monet not only painted impressions, but also complete outdoor landscapes. This view of the Argenteuil railway bridge is typical of the topics that were concerned at the time: the interplay of Mirrors 's between heaven and water, the combination of clouds and steam, the appearance of the train in a rural landscape.

During this time, Monet also dedicated an important series to the theme of the Gare Saint Lazare in 1877 (painting see below).

1872-1886: The birth of impressionism

In 1873, together with Gustave Caillebotte the event of joint exhibitions and founded an artist society for this purpose, which joined all the artists who were later considered the core of the impressionists.

Through a picture of Monet, the impressionists also received its name: The work entitled “Impression - Sunrise” gave the critic Louis Leroy in an article in the Charivari to give the first exhibition of the group in Paris in 1874. A new movement was born.

The year 1874 is crucial for impressionism. photographer Nadar's studios this year . Many important painters took part in this event: Eugène Boudin, Paul Cézanne (1839-1906), Edgar Degas (1834-1917), Berthe Morisot (1841-1895), Camille Pissarro, Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919), Alfred Sisley (1839-1899).

From 1877, the painters claimed the term impressionists .

Even if society soon dissolved, the term impressionists remained, as well as the support of Monet by Durand-Ruel. In 1876 the second impressionist exhibition took place on its premises, and Monet learned further funding from the department store owner Ernest Hoschedé . Not to this: After Hoschedé's bankruptcy and the early death of Monet's first wife Camille, Alice Hoschedé and her six children turned to Monet in 1881.

After 1876, several exhibitions of the Impressionists had taken place, which from 1882 was the last one in which Claude Monet had participated. The other impressionists accused him of no longer supporting the group of selfish motifs, maybe that was the reason that the series of exhibitions ended in 1886 with the eighth exhibition.

In fact, after participating in the exhibition in 1882, Monet had moved away from the impressionists that he was back to the Salon de Paris, whose jury even accepted one of his pictures.

1881-1890: When traveling

In 1881 the painter stopped in Poissy at times before setting himself in Giverny in 1883.

In the same year, the artist traveled to the south of France with Auguste Renoir. In the following years, Monet also traveled to Étretat, the Netherlands, Belle -île-en-Mer and Antibes ( Tulipen fields in Holland , 1886, oil on canvas, Musée d'Orsay , Paris).

From now on, his finances increased constantly, in 1883 Durand-Ruel organized a solo exhibition for him, in general the market for impressionist works was good, Monet was able to take extensive trips on which many works were created.

house in Giverny which had been rented since 1883 , in which his famous garden was created and was constantly expanded by acquisitions.

1884-1891: The haystack series

This important painting series on the subject of millstones and haystacks lets us immerse yourself in the world of the landscape of Normandy . Monet has recorded the motif of wheat yarbles under different lighting conditions at different seasons.

Monet's topic is above all the adherence to the time and the effects of the atmosphere on a nature untouched by human presence.

1892–1894: The cathedrals of Rouen

Between 1892 and 1894, Claude Monet created a series of thirty paintings about the Cathedral Notre-Dame in Rouen, including views of the west portal.

The compositions were painted from different perspectives at various times of the day. Monet finished his paintings in the studio before exhibiting twenty of them in the Durand-Ruel gallery in 1895.

1890-1926: The water lily cycle

Life with his two sons, Alice Hoschedé and her children ran calmly and successfully here, Monet had time to deal with the nature of his painting. Many of his famous nature pictures were created during this time . After the death of Ernest Hoschedé, Monet and Alice legitimized their relationship through marriage in 1892, in 1897 Claude Monet built a second studio, and 20 of his works were exhibited on the blossoming Biennale Di Venezia .

Around 1900, Monet began working on his famous water lily images , the exact representation of the water and the incidence of light should captivate him until his death.

The water lily cycle , a masterpiece of impressionism, employed Claude Monet for three decades, from the end of the 1890s to his death in 1926. Inspired by the water garden, this gigantic cycle consists of almost 300 paintings , including more than 40 large format plates. The compositions developed according to the transformations of the garden.

From the beginning of the cycle, Claude Monet defined two types of compositions . The first refers to the banks of the pelvis and its dense vegetation ( water lily pool , 1899-1900, oil on canvas; Japanese bridge mirrors interrupted with flowers and reflections ( water landscapes, 1903-1908, oil on canvas). The framework of the latter are tight and make every painted piece a fragment of a whole.

The cycle of the water lilies, of which the painter gave the state (Musée de l'orangery) a number of canvases at the request of his friend George Clemenceau, completed his extensive artistic oeuvre.

The complex of his water lily garden was inaugurated in 1927, a year after the painter's death.

Since then, it has been the possibility of visiting the Giverny garden, which is an hour from Paris and lies in the Department of your Normandy.

In this old house there is an atmosphere of the Fin de Siècle, which gently caresses the senses. Through an underpass, you come to the world -famous water gardens, which represent a real highlight for all art lovers and garden fans.

Life, Opus Magnum for France, and death

Monet basically preferred to be alone with nature and to paint instead of going into philosophical or critical arguments in the creative and cultural environment of Paris.

After traveling places such as Venice, London, Norway and France in the 1880s and 1890s, he settled in Giverny for the rest of his life in 1908.

The loss of his second wife Alice in 1911 and his son a year later, as well as the aftermath of the First World War and a cyst over one of his eyes led Monet to almost completely stopped painting.

During this time, the French head of state Georges Clemenceau , who was also friends with Monet, encouraged the artist to create a work that would lead the country out of the melancholy of the Great War. At first, Monet hesitated because he thought he was too old and unsuitable, but Clemenceau gradually pushed him out of his grief and asked him to create a wonderful work of art.

Monet described the work as "Grandes Décorations" , better known as the "water lilies of the Musée de l'Orangerie" (1927). In an oval salon, Monet shows a continuous sequence of water landscapes that represent an empire within a universe. For this reason, a new studio with a glass wall with a view of the garden was furnished. Despite his gray star, Monet was able to maneuver a movable easel through the room in order to capture the constantly changing light and the perspective on its flowers.

The Musée de l'Orangerie finally decided to build two elliptical chambers to accommodate the water lily paintings of Monet. Due to the all-over design of the works and the chambers, visitors felt like in the middle of the water and surrounded by plants. The end installation was praised by many commentators.

Monet died of lung cancer on December 5, 1926 at the age of 86 and was buried in the cemetery of the church of Giverny. The ceremony was kept modest at the request of Monet and only about fifty people took part in the ceremony.

In 1966, Michel Monet gave the house, the gardens and sea ponds of the French Academy of Fine Arts . After the renovation, the house and the site in 1980 were made accessible to the public Fondation Claude Monet

In addition to memorabilia on Monet and other objects from his life, the house also houses a gallery with Japanese woodcuts. Together with the Museum of Impressionism, the house and the gardens are outstanding sights in Giverny, which attract visitors from all over the world.

Claude Monet - Stylistic features, motifs and topics of his works

Claude Monet was particularly enthusiastic about holding the moment of nature in the open air. The artist often left his studio to mainly paint outdoors, which was typical for the later impressionists.

Nowadays, Monet is worshiped as the father of impressionism and his pictures mirrors n motifs from nature and bourgeois everyday life.

Monet has taken up many topics and motifs in his wealthy painting: group portraits , reminiscences on the contemporary Japonism , famous buildings that noticed him on his travels and repeatedly also belong to big city motifs portraits and landscapes .

But the representation of nature in all its color and form of light , painting outdoors in natural light should become the actual challenge and determination of its painting art.

The never fully satisfactory effort, which he related to grasping the life outdoors and beauty of the plants of his garden, is said to have made him happy again and again.

He became known for his words:

My garden is my most beautiful work of art. What I really need are flowers. Always. My heart will always be in Giverny, and maybe I only became an artist because of the flowers. ”

Claude Monet found his greatest inspiration to paint on his own property in Giverny . a beautiful garden created according to his own plans , which was equipped with numerous fruit trees, plants, flowers and ponds.

Six gardeners worked in his garden to make him shine in full bloom in every season. Inspired by Asian culture, Monet added many Japanese elements such as bamboo, cherry and apricot trees into the garden. This exotic garden mirrors is opposed to Monet's pictures and made him particularly famous in Paris. His motifs of the Japanese wooden bridge, which he had built over his sea pond, as well as the water lilies, which he painted again and again, are particularly well known.

Monet's reflection landscapes , as it called its water and water lily images, is completed

Here he finally managed to do the landscape in small excerpts on the surface of the water to mirrors , the shape is almost completely dissolved, the game of color in countless nuances results in a unity of the dabbing and strokes, surfaces and delicate veils that still show, which still shows its large championship.

Technology and approach

It is noteworthy that Claude Monet captures his motifs in a picturesque way at different times of the day, light and weather conditions. His goal was to capture the light through the use of bright colors and short brush strokes. This technology is particularly clearly recognizable in its famous water lily images.

mirrors t is characteristic of Monet's water and water lily images that the surrounding nature is resisted on the water surface. This dissolves clear shapes and flow into each other. This blurred representation of nature is a recurring element in Monet's paintings.

Monet painted nature as he saw and experienced it - a fact that is not entirely without irony. From birth, the impressionist artist suffered from gray star and was therefore extremely short -sighted. It was only at the end of his life that two eye operations enabled him to see better.

Before that, he had strictly refused to wear glasses. Monet is said to have said that he didn't want to see the world so sharply. However, it is controversial whether this was really the reason for his way of painting.

In his work "Impression, Soleil Levant" from 1872 it becomes particularly clear that Monet did not want to map the exact reality of nature. Instead, he tried to capture the mood he perceived, the impression and the sensation that nature triggered in him.

Soot and steam

In 1877 Monet went to the St-Lazare train station to examine a collection of works that researched the effects of soot and steam on color and transparency .

His goal was to understand the influences of fog and rain in landscapes and to present them in his works of art. This research led to a number of famous paintings, such as its water lily series, which showed the same motif in different lighting, at different times of the day and in changing weather and seasons.

This practice began in the 1880s and continued until his death in 1926. In the course of his career, Monet transcended the impressionist style and dared to cross the limits of painting.

Pastel colors

In the 1870s, Monet changed his range of color and increasingly rely on pastel colors, as can be seen in the artwork "Ms. with parasol" (1875). This color selection corresponded to its gentler style, which expressed itself through smaller and more varied brush strokes.

More masterpieces from Monet - a small selection

The outstanding work of art "The Elster" is undoubtedly one of the best snow landscape pictures created by the Claude Monets. At that time, many artists were of a similar preference, so that art historians assume that at that time there were strict winter in France a recurring phenomenon.

Despite the criticism that Monet received for his painting, he was visibly fascinated by the winter landscape and loved to immortalize her in his own style. Painting the snow landscapes, however, was not an easy task because the cold also made the work more difficult. A journalist reported on an experience in which he observed Claude Monet during a snowstorm lasting several days as follows:

"It was freezing cold and the cold was so intense that stones sprang. We saw a foot warmer, a easel and a man wrapped in three coats and struggled with gloves on his hands and a half -frozen face. It was Monet who studied the snow effect."

Claude Monet's legacy and influence on art history

Claude Monet developed as the main representative of impressionism a style that is a synthesis of the various surviving influences: first that of Eugène Boudin and Johan Barthold Jongkind, then the academism of Charles Gleyre, but also the Japanese of his time in fashion at the time.

Monet made both portraits and landscapes that illustrated nature or on the contrary the urbanization of the cities - a topic that was then considered unattractive.

All his life, Claude Monet's main concern was dealing with light and its effects. The repetition of the motif at different times of the day or seasons was only a pretext for his image search. At the end of his life, Monet urged his search to develop an abstract compositions.

Monet's extraordinarily long life and its extensive artistic work form the basis for its current attraction. Impressionism, which it has significantly shaped, remains one of the most sought -after creative movements, as the high heel of diaries, maps and banners shows.

Monet's paintings are highly valued and some of them are considered priceless. In fact, his works of art can be found in every large museum in the world.

Although Monet's pictures are worshiped today, after his death he was only known to a small group of art lovers for a long time. Only the abstract expressionists brought his art in New York to an enormous upswing. Monet's huge paintings and half -abstract, nationwide compositions influenced artists such as Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko . Pop art artists like Andy Warhol also took up his haystacks in recurring portraits.

Several minimalists took over the same concept in their serial presentation of objects. Today Impressionism and Monet are the basis for contemporary and modern art and is therefore fundamental to almost every historical study.

Museums with Collections by Claude Monet

Claude Monet's works are exhibited worldwide. In France, the Marmottan Monet Museum the most important public collection of the artist. Musée de l'Orangerie and the Musée d'Orsay also have many paintings.

of the Claude Monet Foundation , based in Giverny, aims to protect and improve the painter's house and his garden.

Monet's works are also exhibited in international museums: the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, the National Gallery in London, the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid, the Rijkmuseum in Amsterdam.

The most important exhibitions on the artist

• Le Décor Impressionniste, Musée de l'Orangerie, Paris, 2022
• Côté Jardin. De Monet à Bonnard, Musée des ImpressionMes, Giverny, 2021
• Nymphéas. L'abstraction Américaine et le Dernier Monet, Musée de l'Orangerie, Paris, 2018
• Claude Monet, Grand Palais, Paris, 2011
• Le Jardin de Monet à Giverny: L'Invention d'un Paysage, Musée des Impressionnismes, Giverny, 2009
• Monet -Durand-Ruel-France, Paris, 1900
• Claude Monet: Exposition Rétrospective - Musée de l'Orangerie - France, Paris, 1931
• Claude Monet 1840-1926 -Kunsthaus Zurich-Suisse, Zurich, 1952
• Claude Monet -Gemeentemuseum-Pays-Bas, La Haye, 1952
• Claude Monet -Durand-Ruel-France, Paris, 1970
• HOMMAGE à Claude Monet - Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais - France, Paris, 1980
• L'Impressionme et le paysage français -Los Angeles County Museum of Art-Etats-Unis, Los Angeles, 1984
• A day in the country: Impressionism and the French Landscape -The Art Institute of Chicago-Etats-Unis, Chicago, 1984-1985
• L'Impressionme et le paysage français - Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais - France, Paris, 1985
• Emile vibrating: un Musée imaginaire - Musée Charlier - Belgique, Bruxelles, 1997
• L'Ampressionme et l'Art Moderne - Palais de Toksu - Corée, République de, Séoul, 2000 - 2001
• Monet and Japan - National Gallery of Australia - Australie, Canberra, 2001
• Monet and Japan - Art Gallery of Western Australia - Australie, Perth, 2001
• Monet's garden - Kunsthaus Zurich - Suisse, Zurich, 2004 - 2005
• Monet. L'Art de Monet et Sa Postérité - National Art Center - Japon, Tokyo, 2007
• In Monet's Garden. Artists and the Lure of Giverny -Columbus Museum of Art-Etats-Unis, Columbus, 2007-2008
• Claude Monet 1840-1926 -Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais-France, Paris, 2010-2011
• La Rivoluzione dello Sguardo. Capolainvori Impressionisti e Post-impressionisti dal Musée d'Orsay -Museo d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea di Trento e Rovereto-Italie, Rovereto, 2011
• Musée d'Orsay. Capolainvori - Complesso del Vittoriano - Italie, Rome, 2014
• Painting the Modern Garden: Monet to Matisse -Cleveland Museum of Art-Etats-Unis, Cleveland, 2015-2016
• Painting the Modern Garden: Monet to Matisse -Royal Academy of Arts-Royaume University, Londres, 2016
• Christian Dior, Couturier du Rêve - Musée des Arts Décoratifs - France, Paris, 2017 - 2018

Bibliography and further literature

• Heinrich, Christoph, Monet (edition 2023), (available on Amazon*)
• Wildenstein, Daniel, Monet. The triumph of impressionism (edition 2022), ( available on Amazon* )
• Hoschedé, Jean-Pierre, Claude Monet Ce Mal Connu , "Les Jardins de Claude Monet", Genève, 1960
• Wildenstein, Daniel, Claude Monet: Catalogue Raisonné Claude Monet. 1, 1840-1881, Peinures , Paris, Bibliothèque des Arts; Wildenstein Institute, 1974
• Wildenstein, Daniel, list of works, Paris, bags, 1996
• Compin, Isabelle; Roquebert, Anne, Catalogue Sommaire Illustré des Peintures du Musée du Louvre et du Musée d'Orsay , Paris, Réunion of the Musées Nationalaux, 1986
• Patin, Sylvie, Jardins d'Fere et d'Aujourd'hui , Paris, Musée d'Orsay; Hachette; Réunion of the Musées Nationalaux, 1991
• Lobstein, Dominique, Claude Monet in Giverny: The painter and his garden, Quintin, Gisserot, 2002, ( available on Amazon* )
• Le Men, Ségolène, Monet, Paris, Citadelles and Mazenod, 2017

Joachim Rodriguez y Romero

Owner and managing director of Kunstplaza . Publicist, editor and passionate blogger in the field of art, design and creativity since 2011. Successful conclusion in web design as part of a university degree (2008). Further development of creativity techniques through courses in free drawing, expression painting and theatre/acting. Profound knowledge of the art market through many years of journalistic research and numerous collaborations with actors/institutions from art and culture.

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