Claude Monet: Haystacks
Wheatstacks (End of Summer)
1890-91,Oil on canvas, 60 x 100
The only merit I have is to have painted
directly from nature with the aim of conveying my impression
in front of the most fugitive effects.
Claude Monet
Haystacks at Chailly at Sunrise
1865, oil on canvas, 30 x 60 cm
San Diego Museum of Art
Monet receives his
first commission aged just 17, some of his drawings are
displayed in the local art shop in La Harve along side the
artist Eugene Boudin (1824-1892). The two artist inevitable
meet and strike a lifetime friendship. I personally think
this chance meeting is the root of impressionism, for it is
Eugene that introduces Monet to pein-air (open air)
landscape painting; Which was for many years to come frowned
upon by the establishment.
After
going out to paint with Boudin, Monet was totally converted
to plain-air and became seriousness rather than casual
approach to art. He declaims to his family, I'm going to be
an artist.
Impressionist
Monet moves to
Paris and enrolls at the Academies Suisse, where he first
meets Camille Pissarro. the two artist are to become the
founding figures of Impressionism. Unfortunately the
embryonic state was delayed by the Algerian war. After a
year as a soldier Monet contracts typhoid and his aunt
requisitions him out of the army.
In November 1862
Monet goes back to Paris to study art with the Swiss painter
Charles Gleyre.
While their Claude
Oscar Monet drops the Oscar from his name, from now on he
sign his paintings " Claude Monet".
While at the
academy Monet meets three kindred spirits;- Frederic Bazille
(1841-70), Alfred Sisley (1839-99) and Pierre-Auguste
Renoir. Over the next four years their aims and style
crystallizes into what we now call Impressionist. Monet even
in those early days emerged as the lordly leader of
Impressionism.
January 1865 Monet
and Bazille move into a flat on the Rue Furstenlerd. Monet
finishes " The
Mouth of the Seine at Hornfleur" and "The Point
de la H'eve at Low Tide".
They are both excepted
into the Paris Salon. In the same exhibition the
similar named Manet was being criticized for his
evolutionary "Olympia" as a moral and artist outrage. Monet
is so inspired by Manet at the same time want's to be
favorably compared. He decides to paint "Dejeuner sur Le
Herbe" to compete but abandons the painting unfinished.
Early 1867 Monet
broke as ever, returns to Paris and stays with the more
affluent Bazille, who is also supporting Renoir in his flat.
Monet and Renoir become close friends and go about Paris
painting together. At this time having been once again
rejected by the Saloon the artist friends contemplate an
independent exhibition of there own work, but funds as usual
were short.
In 1867 Monet's
partner and model Camille had their child Jean, Bazille
become godfather. Monet had difficulty with the
responsibilities of fatherhood continued to live with his
Aunt until after the birth.
In 1868 the family
moved to Bennecourt on the river Seine, not far from Giverny
where some 15 years later Monet settles for the rest of his
long life. Upon arrival at Bennecuort Monet paints what is
tentatively the first impressionist painting "The Seine at
Bennecourt".
Renoir and Monet
made a habit of going out to paint together in the 1860's,
developing the impressionist style with pure colour put side
by side rather than mixed on the palette, plus the use of
different colour in the shadows than had previously been
used. They were followed in concurrently by Sisley and
Pissarro, practicing similar techniques. Exchanging ideas
with each other at regular meetings at the Cafe Guerbois.
These four joined the Lordly Manet at his reserved table.,
other included Degas, Cézanne, Bethe Morisot and Bazille.
In 1870 Monet and
his family along with fellow painters move to London to
avoid the Prussian invasion and siege of Paris in September.
It was while in London
that Pissarro introduced Monet to Durand-Ruel who was
fast becoming an international Art dealer. Also while in
London the artist visited the National Gallery to view such
past masters as Turner and Constable.
Not long after
Monet’s return to France he visited Le Harve and painted the
picture titled Impression: Sunset, which was hang in the
first Impressionist exhibition of 1874, at which a
journalist coined the term Impressionist. All the painters
of this style were poor around this time for the paintings
were not popular because of the bad press, but within the
next decade things slowly improve and Monet could afford to
buy his now famous house in Giverny. Here he employed six
gardeners to make his Japanese water garden and paint his
series of water lily and Japanese bridge paintings
Died: Monet was
partially blind towards the end of his life, to paint he
would have his stepdaughter hand him the colours. He
contracted cancer and on the 5 th December 1926 passed away
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