Claude Monet Founder of Impressionism 1840-1926 Light is the most important person in the picture. - Claude Monet

About Claude Monet Claude Monet was a French painter and considered one of the masters of impressionism Monet was born in Paris, France in 1840. His full name is Oscar-Claude Monet. His family owned a grocery store and his father wanted him to take over the family business. He only wanted to paint; eventually he went to art school. At 21, Monet joined the military for a seven year commitment, because he sought adventure. He became ill and his family paid to have taken out of the army, however he would have to agree to go art school. Monet was fascinated with nature and took every advantage to highlight trees, plants, grass, flowers, and water in many of his paintings. He liked to experiment with light in work. Monet began to paint series of the same scenes. He would paint them at different times of the day and in different types of weather

About Impressionism Impressionism was a style of painting that became popular over 150 years ago in France, around 1860. Until then in the art world, artists painted people and scenery in a realistic manner, also known as Realism. Think of a painting that almost looks like a photograph: Young Women From the Village, 1852, Gustave Courbet

About Impressionism Characteristics of Impressionist paintings include: visible brush strokes, open composition, light depicting the effects of the passage of time, ordinary subject matter, movement, and unusual visual angles. The Impressionist movement began in the 1860s and became most popular in the 1870s and 1880s. As a technique, impressionists used dabs of paint (often straight out of a paint tube) to recreate the impression they saw of the light and the effects the light had on color. Most Impressionistic artists painted outdoors, in order to see the variations of light. The Impressionism movement was short lived but inspired other artists from all over, including America, to begin using this new technique.

About Impressionism Monet became friends with several of the leading artists of the time including Pierre Renoir, Edouard Manet, and Camille Pissarro. Together they formed the Society of Anonymous Painters, Sculptors, and Printers. They wanted to experiment with art and not do the same classical art that satisfied the art critics of Paris. They organized an exhibition of their art in 1874. One critic called it the Exhibition of the Impressionists. The term "impressionist" was used to imply that the art was just an impression of something and not completed. It was meant as an insult.  With that critique, the style of Impressionism was born. Claude Monet's Impression Sunrise, was the inspiration of the term Impressionism. Sunrise, 1872, Oil on Canvas Claude Monet

About Giverny - Monet's house and garden I must have flowers, always, and always. -Claude Monet About Giverny - Monet's house and garden In 1883, Monet rented a house and gardens in Giverny. By November 1890, Monet was prosperous enough to buy the house, the surrounding buildings and the land for his gardens. During the 1890s, Monet built a greenhouse and a second studio, a spacious building well lit with skylights. Monet wrote daily instructions to his gardener, precise designs and layouts for plantings, and invoices for his floral purchases and his collection of botany books. As Monet's wealth grew, his garden evolved. He remained its architect, even after he hired seven gardeners. Monet purchased additional land with a water meadow. In 1893 he began a vast landscaping project which included lily ponds that would become the subjects of his best-known works. White water lilies local to France were planted along with imported cultivars from South America and Egypt, resulting in a range of colours including yellow, blue and white lilies that turned pink with age. In 1899 he began painting the water lilies, first in vertical views with a Japanese bridge as a central feature, and later in the series of large-scale paintings that was to occupy him continuously for the next 20 years of his life. This scenery, with its alternating light and mirror-like reflections, became an integral part of his work. By the mid-1910s Monet had achieved: a completely new, fluid, and somewhat audacious style of painting in which the water-lily pond became the point of departure for an almost abstract art.

The Water Lily Pond (The Japanese Bridge) at Giverny today The Water Lily Pond (The Japanese Bridge), 1899, Princeton University, The Art Museum

Flowering Arches, Giverny, 1913. Phoenix Art Museum Flowering Arches and Pond at Giverny today

Where Monet most likely painted the Flower Arches Claude Monet's garden at Giverny Where Monet most likely painted the Flower Arches Flower Arches

The light constantly changes, and that alters the atmosphere and beauty of things every minute. – Claude Monet