photo #8949071

Camille Monet on her Deathbed (1879) – Monet’s wife Camille died after a long battle with tuberculosis, and Monet painted her shortly before her passing. Monet was born in Paris in 1840 but his family moved to Normandy when he was 5. He knew from a young age that he wanted to be an artist rather than go into the family grocery business, and so he went to school to learn technique. When he was 16, Monet met Eugene Boudin who taught him to paint outdoors, “en plein air.” When he went to Paris, many painters cooped themselves up in the Louvre and copied the works of the masters, as you’ve read about already on this blog, but Monet chose to develop the methods taught to him Boudin. He worked outdoors, painting scenes as he saw them rather than the way they were seen by artists who came before him. Monet served briefly in the armed service until he became ill and had to return home. He met several budding artists, including Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and they began experimenting with the new style that would become impressionism. During the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871), Monet lived in England and studied works by great landscape artists such as John Constable. In 1873 he painted Impression, Sunrise, the painting for which the entire Impressionism movement was named. The term “Impressionism” was originally meant as an insult by an art critic but the painters liked it and used the name to describe their style of painting. After his wife died in 1879 (shown above on her death bed), Monet began in earnest to produce. He continued in the Impressionist style and tried to create a portrait of France with his paintings. In 1883 when he moved to Giverny and, over the next 10 years, planted his grand garden. He loved to paint the garden and the lily ponds. He painted his many series during this time, which showed the same subject at different times during the day. You’ve seen some of these series already, including Water Lilies, Rouen Cathedral, and Etretat. Toward the end of his life, Monet developed cataracts in his eyes which affected the way he saw colors. He continued to paint anyway, but you can tell which paintings were created when his eyes were bad. In 1926, at the age of 86, Monet died and was buried in Giverny.