Claude Monet was born in Paris on the 14th November,
1840. When he was five years old, he moved to the port
town of Le Havre. For much of his childhood, Monet was
considered by both his teachers and his parents to be
undisciplined and, therefore, unlikely to make a
success of his life. Enforcing this impression, Monet
showed no interest in inheriting his father's
wholesale grocery. The only subject which seemed to
spark any interest in the child was painting. He
developed a decent reputation in school for the
caricatures he was fond of creating. By the age of
fifteen, he was receiving commission for his work.
It was at Le Havre that Monet met the
painter Eugène Boudin. While Boudin's own paintings
have never been held in that high regard, he is seen
as having played a critical role in the education of
Monet. Born of a seafaring family in 1824, Boudin was
obsessed with the idea of painting outdoors or en
plein air . The two painters met in 1856 and, at
first, Monet resisted Boudin's offer of tuition but he
eventually relaxed his protestations and before long,
the two had forged a relationship that was to last a
lifetime. Although Monet soon left Le Havre to spend a
large part of his life traveling throughout Europe, he
returned frequently to visit his old friend. The
interest that had been sparked some years earlier was
refined and shaped and Monet was in no doubt as to the
extent to which his outlook on life had been altered:
My eyes were finally opened and I
understood nature; I learned at the same time to
love it.
Boudin may have opened Monet's eyes,
he may have even convinced the young painter to break
with tradition and finish his paintings outdoors, but
the young protégé had yet to truly experience the
country's capital. Before long, the limitations of L e
Havre on a burgeoning young artist became all to
apparent and, in 1859, Monet left for Paris. However,
having displaced himself to the heart of Europe's
art-world, Monet soon found himself disillusioned by
the confines of long-since established principles. He
rejected the formal art training that was available in
Paris. Bored and frustrated, Monet was to do more
painting at the very relaxed Académie Suisse
then in the formal schools for which he had left Le
Havre.
In the Spring of 1862, Monet was
called up for National Service. He went to Algeria for
a year with a prestigious regiment: les Chaussures
d'Afrique . This experience was to have a profound
effect on Monet. The landscapes and colours of Alg
eria presented an entirely different perspective of
the world, one which was to inspire him for many years
to come. Theoretically, Monet should have remained in
Algeria for seven years, but his time there was
curtailed by the contraction of typhoid. The artist's
aunt, Madame Lecadre, intervened and bought Monet out
of the army. Her only condition: that Monet return to
Paris and make a serious attempt at completing a
formal artistic tuition course.
Despite these provisions, Monet did
not enroll in l'École des Artistes . It was a
renowned institution, but one filled with the
traditionalists that Monet was so determined to
contradict. Instead, he joined the studio of the
Swiss-born Charles Gleyre. Gleyre was a successful
Salon painter but he was neither a professor at the
École nor was he a member of the Académie .
Remembering his own poverty as a student artist,
Gleyre charged very little, only 10 francs for models
and the studio. This leniency attracted a large number
of artists. The student body, such as it existed, was
extremely diverse: young, old; rich, poor; good, bad,
etc. Among them all, however, Monet was to meet three
very close and influential friends: Frédéric Bazille,
Auguste Renoir and Alfred Sisley. This subcategory
of Gleyre's students was representative of the
studio's diverse constitution. While all three of
these painters were talented, they came from very
different social backgrounds. Noticeably, Renoir was
considerably less well-off then his fellow artists.
The unifying force that was to bind the group for so
long, however, was the commitment and intense
dedication to their new approach to art. One which was
eventually to be labeled impressionism.
Gleyre was a very talented
instructor and all his students benefited from his
persistent teaching methods. Monet remained at his
studio for approximately two years. Throughout this
time, Monet, Renoir, Sisley and Bazille made frequent
trips to the nearby forest of Fontainbleau - located
South-East of Paris. This forest had been a popular
venue for artists for a number of years. How ever,
this new group broke the tradition of their
predecessor's paintings by replacing subdued colours
and dark shadows with open spaces and sunlight. When
Monet was not fulfilling his need to be outdoors by
going to Fontainbleau, he was visiting his old friend,
Boudin, in Le Havre. There can be no doubt as to his
enthusiasm during this time:
Every day I discover more and more
beautiful things. It's enough to drive one mad: I
have such a desire to do everything, my head is
bursting with it.
This enthusiasm and appreciation of
the world outdoors was rewarding but Monet wanted to
make a name for himself and this meant appeasing the
tradionalists of the Académie . Contrary to the
advice of his friend and mentor, Boudin, Monet adhered
to the expectations placed on serious entries to the
Salon and painted a number of pictures in doors. These
were very successful. But his larger piece drew some
criticism. Quite the opposite from the expected smooth
surfaces which were in vog ue at the time, Monet's
entry was "broadly handled with a loaded brush, giving
a rough surface texture and clearly visible
brushstrokes, and sacrificing detail to overall
effect."
Monet persisted in his efforts to
appeal to the Académie and during the
period from '65 to '66 he painted a number of subjects
with varying degrees of success. His last entry, The
Woman in the Green Dress (reportedly painted in four
days), bought both recognition and introduction to his
mistress, Camille Doncieux. Monet, desperate to
achieve complete success, immersed himself in his next
project and entry to the Salon for the following year:
Women in the Garden. This painting too k a very long
time to finish because Monet would only paint when the
light was falling correctly on every aspect of the
painting's subject-matter. In order to complete the
top of his canvas, Monet dug himself a ditch so that
he could continue to paint the scene from the same
perspective (other painters simply stood upon a
ladder). Despite these many arduous efforts, the Salon
rejected the painting when it was finally entered for
the following season.
Shortly after the Salon's decision,
Camille became pregnant. They had little money and
were largely dependent on Monet's friends. Madame
Lecadre took Monet in to her house, but Camille was
forced to remain in Paris. This marked the beginning
of a lifestyle which was becoming increasingly
itinerant, culminating in Monet's move to London in
the early 1870's to avoid involvement in the
Franco-Prussian War. Here he was exposed to the
English masters, Constable and Turner. Later, Monet
returned again to Le Havre where he painted the often
cited Impression: Sunrise, the painting
largely credited with the naming of the entire
movement.
After the completion of the
Sunrise, Monet moved back to Paris and
finally rented a house at Argenteuil on the Seine
where he and Camille lived for six years. This period
represents the height of the impressionist movement.
Frequently joined by Renoir and other friends from his
student days, Monet painted every aspect of life and
the world out door s. In 1874, Manet, Degas, Cézanne,
Renoir, Pissarro, Sisley and Monet put together an
exhibition which has been vastly talked about in the
history books but was, unfortunately, a contemporary
disaster. The exhibition marked a return to financial
insecurity for Monet and it was only the intercession
of Manet (once a critic, now a friend) that allowed
Monet to remain at Argenteuil. In an attempt to recoup
some of his losses, Monet made a sale of his paintings
at the Hotel Drouot. This, too, was a complete
failure.
These setbacks demonstrate a
remarkable quality about the painter. Despite almost
constant rejection and financial uncertainty, Monet's
paintings never became morose or even, really, all
that somber. Instead, Monet immersed himself in the
task of perfecting a style which still had not been
accepted by the world at large.
His rendering of the quiver of
light in the expanse of space reached its chromatic
fullness...he replaced his technique of broad
modulations with a kind of pictorial granulation.
Never fully content, Monet went to
Dieppe, Pourville and Varengeville-sur-Mer. His first
wife Camille died in 1882, and in 1883 Monet finally
settled in Giverny where he remained until his death.
This geographical constant was coupled with the
disintegration of the group of impressionists. Other
influences and groups presented themselves and,
gradually, each of the painters drifted away to pursue
their own styles. Among the newcomers was Vincent van
Gogh.
In 1892 Monet married Alice Hoschede,
with whom he had had an affair during his marriage to
Camille. In that year he painted his series of Rouen
Cathedral, noticing how every aspect of the scene was
altered in accordance with the changing light. This
realization was to become an obsession in his later
years. At last, Monet gained renown. He knew several
important people and he became financially secure for
the first time in his life. With this new-found
luxury, Monet devoted himself to gardening which, in
turn, provided a motif for the painter's last
important work, the Water Lily Pool . Monet was
absorbed in this project almost exclusively from 1900
until his death,
...stripping it of objective
solidity and creating of it an ethereal, lyrical
abstraction.
Arts &
Monet, Claude
booksClaude Monet French Impressionist
Painter, 1840-1926
Monet, Claude (1840-1926). French
Impressionist painter. He is regarded as the archetypal Impressionist in
that his devotion to the ideals of the movement
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