Monet, Claude Oscar (1840-1926),

        Claude Monet was a French impressionist painter, who brought the study of the transient effects of natural light to its most refined expression.  Monet was born on November 14, 1840, in Paris, but he spent most of his childhood in Le Havre. There, in his teens, he studied drawing; he also painted seascapes outside with the French painter Eugène Louis Boudin. By 1859 Monet had committed himself to a career as an artist and began to spend as much time in Paris as possible. During the 1860s he was associated with the preimpressionist painter Édouard Manet, and with other aspiring French painters destined to form the impressionist school-Camille Pissarro, Pierre Auguste Renoir, and Alfred Sisley.
        Working outside, Monet painted simple landscapes and scenes of contemporary middle-class society, and he began to have some success at official exhibitions. As his style developed, however, Monet violated one traditional artistic convention after another in the interest of direct artistic expression. His experiments in rendering outdoor sunlight with a direct, sketchlike application of bright color became more and more daring, and he seemed to cut himself off from the possibility of a successful career as a conventional painter supported by the art establishment.
        In 1874 Monet and his colleagues decided to appeal directly to the public by organizing their own exhibition. Monet's compositions from this time are extremely loosely structured, and the color was applied in strong, distinct strokes as if no reworking of the pigment had been attempted. This technique was calculated to suggest that the artist had indeed captured a spontaneous impression of nature. During the 1870s and 1880s Monet gradually refined this technique, and he made many trips to scenic areas of France, especially the Mediterranean and Atlantic coasts, to study the most brilliant effects of light and color possible.
        By the mid-1880s Monet, generally regarded as the leader of the impressionist school, had achieved significant recognition and financial security. Despite the boldness of his color and the extreme simplicity of his compositions, he was recognized as a master of meticulous observation, an artist who sacrificed neither the true complexities of nature nor the intensity of his own feelings. In 1890 he was able to purchase some property in the village of Giverny, not far from Paris, and there he began to construct a water garden (now open to the public)-a lily pond arched with a Japanese bridge and overhung with willows and clumps of bamboo. Beginning in 1906, paintings of the pond and the water lilies occupied him for the remainder of his life; they hang in the Orangerie, Paris; the Art Institute of Chicago; and the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. Throughout these years he also worked on his other celebrated "series" paintings, groups of works representing the same subject-haystacks, poplars, Rouen Cathedral, the river Seine-seen in varying light, at different times of the day or seasons of the year. Despite failing eyesight, Monet continued to paint almost up to the time of his death, on December 5, 1926, at Giverny.

SOURCE:  "Monet, Claude Oscar," Microsoft(R) Encarta(R) 96 Encyclopedia.
 
 

   Garden at Sainte-Adresse, 1867, Oil on canvas, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
 

   Bathing at La Grenouillere, 1869, Oil on white primed canvas
 

   The Beach at Trouville, 1870, Oil on canvas, National Gallery, London
 

   Impression, soleil levant, 1872, Oil on canvas, Musee Marmottan, Paris
 

   Coquelicots (Poppies, Near Argenteuil), 1873, Musée d'Orsay, Paris.
 

   The Stroll, Camille Monet and Her Son Jean (Woman with a Parasol), 1875, Oil on canvas, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
 

   Rock Arch West of Etretat (The Manneport), 1883, Oil on canvas, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
 

   Garden in Bordighera, Impression of Morning, 1884, Oil on canvas, The Hermitage, St. Petersburg
 

   Wheatstacks (End of Summer),1890-91, Oil on canvas, The Art Institute of Chicago
 

   Poplars along the River Epte, Autumn, 1891, Oil on canvas, Private collection
 

   Meule, Soleil Couchant, 1891, Oil on canvas,  Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
 

   Rouen Cathedral, the West Portal, Dull Weather, dated 1894, painted 1892, Oil on canvas, Musee d'Orsay, Paris
 

   Rouen Cathedral, the West Portal and Saint-Romain Tower, Full Sunlight, Harmony in Blue and Gold,
   dated 1894, painted 1893, Oil on canvas, Musee d'Orsay, Paris
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

   Water Lilies (The Clouds),1903,Oil on canvas, Private collection
 

   Houses of Parliament, London, Sun Breaking Through the Fog, 1904, Oil on canvas, Musee d'Orsay, Paris
 

   The Japanese Bridge, Probably 1918-24, Oil on canvas, The Minneapolis Institute of Arts
 
 

Links to other sites with information about Monet

• Amore Gallery
• The Artchive
• CGFA - A Virtual Art Museum
• WebMuseum