Claude Monet

Claude Monet
Claude Monet, French impressionist painter and known as the founder of French impressionism, was born o­n November 14th, 1840 in Paris, France as the second son of Claude Adolphe Monet and Louise Justine Aubrée Monet. His family later moved to Le Havre in Normandy in 1845, where his father urged him to join the family grocery business; Monet, however—whose mother was a singer--aspired to become an artist and entered the Le Havre secondary school of the arts o­n April 1st, 1851. Monet also received lessons and mentorship from artists Jacques-François Ochard and Eugène Boudin.

The term “impressionism” was coined by art critic Louis Leroy from the title of Monet’s Impression, Sunrise, a Le Havre landscape which he painted in 1872 and which hung in the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874. It is now located in the Musée Marmottan Monet. After 1880, Monet became capable of earning income from the sales of his paintings; he subsequently bought a house in Giverny where he painted regularly. In 1890, he began to paint serial paintings of the same subjects under different light conditions. The subject of his last great project was his garden, pond, and water lilies, producing twenty-two mural paintings o­n commission by the French government before his death o­n December 5, 1926 from lung cancer.

Claude Monet Springtime
Monet continues to be regarded as having been the most consistent practitioner of impressionism and plein-air landscape painting. His work continues to sell posthumously, o­ne of the highest prices paid for his work being USD $71,846,600 for Nympheas – Water Lilies.

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