Claude Monet

Coordinates	1°29′00″N103°44′00″N
Name	Claude Monet
Caption	Claude Monet, photo by Nadar, 1899.
Birthname	Oscar Claude Monet
Birthdate	November 14, 1840
Birth place	Paris, France
Deathdate	December 05, 1926
Deathplace	Giverny, France
Nationality	French
Field	Painter
Movement	Impressionism
Works	Impression, SunriseRouen Cathedral seriesLondon Parliament seriesWater LiliesHaystacksPoplars
Patrons	Gustave Caillebotte, Ernest Hoschedé, Georges Clemenceau
Influenced by	Eugène Boudin, Johan Jongkind, Gustave Courbet

Claude Monet (), born Oscar Claude Monet (14 November 1840 – 5 December 1926), was a founder of French impressionist painting, and the most consistent and prolific practitioner of the movement's philosophy of expressing one's perceptions before nature, especially as applied to plein-air landscape painting. where he made twenty-five paintings (and the police suspected him of revolutionary activities). and, after their excursion to London and Zaandam, they had moved to Argenteuil, in December 1871. It was during this time that Monet painted various works of modern life. Camille became ill in 1876. They had a second son, Michel, on 17 March 1878, (Jean was born in 1867). This second child weakened her already fading health. In that same year, he moved to the village of Vétheuil. On 5 September 1879, Camille Monet died of tuberculosis at the age of thirty-two; Monet painted her on her death bed.

Giverny

, 1887, Art Gallery of New South Wales]] , Madrid]] At the beginning of May 1883, Monet and his large family rented a house and from a local landowner. The house was situated near the main road between the towns of Vernon and Gasny at Giverny. There was a barn that doubled as a painting studio, orchards and a small garden. The house was close enough to the local schools for the children to attend and the surrounding landscape offered many suitable motifs for Monet's work. The family worked and built up the gardens and Monet's fortunes began to change for the better as his dealer Paul Durand-Ruel had increasing success in selling his paintings. 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. Beginning in the 1880s and 1890s through the end of his life in 1926, Monet worked on "series" paintings, in which a subject was depicted in varying light and weather conditions. His first series exhibited as such was of Haystacks, painted from different points of view and at different times of the day. Fifteen of the paintings were exhibited at the Galerie Durand-Ruel in 1891. He later produced several series of paintings including: Rouen Cathedral, Poplars, the Parliament, Mornings on the Seine, and the Water Lilies that were painted on his property at Giverny.

Monet was fond of painting controlled nature: his own gardens in Giverny, with its water lilies, pond, and bridge. He also painted up and down the banks of the Seine, producing paintings such as Break-up of the ice on the Seine. He 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. After his wife died, Blanche looked after and cared for him. It was during this time that Monet began to develop the first signs of cataracts.

During World War I, in which his younger son Michel served and his friend and admirer Clemenceau led the French nation, Monet painted a series of weeping willow trees as homage to the French fallen soldiers. In 1923, he underwent two operations to remove his cataracts: the paintings done while the cataracts affected his vision have a general reddish tone, which is characteristic of the vision of cataract victims. It may also be that after surgery he was able to see certain ultraviolet wavelengths of light that are normally excluded by the lens of the eye, this may have had an effect on the colors he perceived. After his operations, he even repainted some of these paintings, with bluer water lilies than before the operation.

Later paintings

Death

, 1920-1926, Musée de l'Orangerie]] Monet died of lung cancer on 5 December 1926 at the age of 86 and is buried in the Giverny church cemetery. Monet had insisted that the occasion be simple; thus only about fifty people attended the ceremony.

His home, garden and waterlily pond were bequeathed by his son Michel, his only heir, to the French Academy of Fine Arts (part of the Institut de France) in 1966. Through the Fondation Claude Monet, the house and gardens were opened for visit in 1980, following restoration. In addition to souvenirs of Monet and other objects of his life, the house contains his collection of Japanese woodcut prints. The house is one of the two main attractions of Giverny, which hosts tourists from all over the world.

Posthumous sales

, 1922.]]

In 2004, London, the Parliament, Effects of Sun in the Fog (Londres, le Parlement, trouée de soleil dans le brouillard) (1904), sold for U.S. $20.1 million. In 2006, the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society published a paper providing evidence that these were painted in situ at St Thomas' Hospital over the river Thames.

Falaises près de Dieppe (Cliffs near Dieppe) has been stolen on two separate occasions. Once in 1998 (in which the museum's curator was convicted of the theft and jailed for five years and two months along with two accomplices) and most recently in August 2007. It was recovered in June 2008.

Monet's Le Pont du chemin de fer à Argenteuil, an 1873 painting of a railway bridge spanning the Seine near Paris, was bought by an anonymous telephone bidder for a record $ 41.4 million at Christie's auction in New York on 6 May 2008. The previous record for his painting stood at $ 36.5 million. Le bassin aux nymphéas (from the water lilies series) sold at Christie's 24 June 2008, lot 19, for £36,500,000 ($71,892,376.34) (hammer price) or £40,921,250 ($80,451,178) with fees, setting a new auction record for the artist.

Nympheas - Water Lilies sold for USD 71,846,600. . This was one of the highest prices paid for Monet's work.

See also

Étretat

History of painting

List of works by Claude Monet

Snow at Argenteuil

Western painting

References

Further reading

Howard, Michael The Treasures of Monet. (Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris, 2007).

Kendall, Richard Monet by Himself, (Macdonald & Co 1989, updated Time Warner Books 2004), ISBN 0-316-72801-2

Tucker, Paul Hayes, Monet in the '90s. (Museum of Fine Arts in association with Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1989).

Tucker, Paul Hayes Claude Monet: Life and Art Amilcare Pizzi, Italy 1995 ISBN 0-300-06298-2

Tucker, Paul Hayes, Monet in the 20th Century. (Royal Academy of Arts, London, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and Yale University press. 1998).

External links

A Monet biography, triada.bg

Biography at Musee Claude Monet à Giverny, fondation-monet.com

Biography of Claude Monet, intermonet.com

Monet in Amsterdam, livius.org

Claude Monet by himself, intermonet.com

Claude Monet paintings, media & interactive timeline, mootnotes.com

Claude Monet's cataract, moodbook.com

Comparison of reproductions of Monet, kasrl.org

Life of Monet a timeline of Monet's life. simile.mit.edu

Monet at Giverny

Photos of Monet's grave

The Unknown Monet exhibition - view sketchbooks, clarkart.edu

Union List of Artist Names, Getty Vocabularies.

Claude Monet Works,

Category:1840 births Category:1926 deaths Category:People from Paris Category:French painters Category:Impressionist painters Category:Deaths from lung cancer Category:Cancer deaths in France Category:Alumni of the École des Beaux-Arts