Claude Monet Painter

Claude Monet painter

Claude Monet painter born (1840-1926) a French impressionist painter and regarded as the archetypal Impressionist in that his devotion to the ideals of the

movement was unwavering throughout his long career, and it is fitting that one of his pictures---Impression: Sunrise (MusИe Marmottan, Paris; 1872)---gave the group his name. Monet was born in Paris and grew up in Le Havre, France, along the beautiful, yet rugged, Normandy coast. In Le Havre, Monet's passion for the landscape was born. Monet followed his passion for art to Paris where his abilities and desires were nurtured. It was during his years in Paris that Monet's professional associations with Renoir, Sisley, and Pissarro began, and continued throughout his life. These relationships collectively gave rise to the Impressionist movement, named after Monet's painting impression sunrise which is now held at the Museum Marmotten in Paris.

In 1883 Monet returned to his beloved Normandy; more specifically, to the small village of Giverny, just north of Paris, along the Seine River. By 1890, Monet had become affluent enough through his art, that he was able to purchase his home and gardens in Giverny. He subsequently, created an environment which reflected his artistic sensibility: an oasis complete with water lily ponds and Japanese bridges which gently span the now famous water gardens. Monet painted 12 very large canvases of the water lily basin which he donated to the French Government and to this day, can be viewed at the Museum L'Orangerie in Paris. In the film "Monet's Palate®," Professor Joachim Pissarro, noted art historian and Great- Grandson of Camille Pissarro, states, "When the right light effect was there, Monet would have to run immediately to capture it." Monet's home and gardens, nestled within the region of Normandy, supplied the artist and his Impressionist followers with the right subjects and contrasts of light.

Monet always stood up to work, whether outdoors or in the studio, and he never believed his paintings were finished, frequently reworking them in the studio in spite of his often-stated belief in instantaneity. Except in the earlier works he did little or no under drawing or tonal under painting, beginning each painting with colours approximating to the finished ones, and working all over the canvas at the same time with long thin bristle brushes. His brushwork varied from painting to painting as well as through the course of his long career, but one of the main characteristics of his work, and of other members of the group, is the use of what is known as the tache, the method of applying paint in small opaque touches, premixed on the palette with the minimum of mixing medium. This provides a patchwork-like fabric of all-over colour, described by Zola as an ensemble of delicate, accurate taches which, from a few steps back, give a striking relief to the picture." Toward the end of his life his eyesight became poor, but he continued to paint until his death. In fact, when he died, he was working on a huge water lily painting that today hangs unfinished in the Orangerie of the Tuileries (tweel REE) Gardens in France.

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