In depicting the natural world, he based his art on perceptual rather than conceptual knowledge. It’s important to note that in this aspect, Monet belongs to the tradition of Renaissance illusionism. So rather than painting a myriad of separate leaves, he depicted splashes of constantly changing light and color. While traditional landscape artists painted what they saw in their mind, Claude Monet, sought to paint the world exactly how he saw it, not how he knew it should look. The result was a canvas alive with painterly activity, the opposite of the smooth blended surfaces of the past. To capture the fleeting lights and hues, Monet had to employ a new painting technique using short brushstrokes filled with individual color. Monet worked directly from nature and revealed that even on the darkest, gloomiest day, an infinite variety of colors exist. The paintings are essentially illusionist, but ring with a chromatic vibrancy. During that first show his painting Impression: Sunrise (1872) inspired a hostile newspaper critic to call all the artists "Impressionists," a name that persists to characterize the artistic movement today.Ĭlaude Monet's paintings from the 1870s, notably Red Boats at Argenteuil (1875), are fine examples of the new Impressionist style. Monet regularly exhibited his paintings in the private Impressionist group shows, which first took place in 1874. His best-known, most popular works were produced during this time at Argenteuil, where he often painted alongside Renoir, Sisley, Caillebotte, and Manet. In 1870, Claude Monet married his wife, Camille, and the two traveled to London and eventually settled at Argenteuil. The artist was financially unstable and frequently destroyed his own paintings rather than have them seized by creditors. Tragically, few of Monet's canvases from this early period survived. Terrace at Sainte-Adresse (1867) exemplified this experimentation with its shimmering array of bright, natural colors, eschewing the somber browns and blacks of the earlier landscape tradition. The artist continually sought to convey the remarkable variety and subtle particulars of each new landscape. He also worked in the forest at Fontainebleau with the Barbizon artists Théodore Rousseau, Jean François Millet, as well as with Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot.ĭuring the 1960s, Claude Monet was constantly traveling, having become captivated by natural light, atmosphere, and color. Upon his return to Paris, he picked up where he left off, studying art, experimenting with new styles, traveling, and forming important friendships with fellow painters, including Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley, Frédéric Bazille, and Édouard Manet. He studied at the free Académie Suisse, where he met Camille Pissarro, and was a frequent patron of the Brasserie des Martyrs, a gathering place for fellow realist artists such as Gustave Courbet.Ĭlaude Monet took a brief hiatus from his artistic pursuits to serve in the military in Algeria from 1860 to 1862. There, he was inspired by the work of Eugène Delacroix, Charles Daubigny, and Camille Corot. Monet was reluctant to leave the studio and the familiarity of indoor scenes, but plein air painting eventually became the basis for his life’s work.Īgainst his parents’ wishes, Claude Monet left home for Paris in 1859 to pursue a career in painting. In 1858, the young artist met landscape painter Eugène Boudin, a mentor who first introduced him to outdoor painting. Claude Monet was raised in Le Havre, where he developed a reputation as a caricature artist by the time he was 15. Born November 14, 1840, in Paris, France.
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