Meet Claude Monet

Read About the Artist Claude Monet

Merely think, here is a little square of blue, here an oblong of pink, here a streak of yellow, and paint it just as it looks to you.Claude Monet

Claude Monet (French, 1840–1926) was a successful caricaturist in his native Le Havre, France, but after studying plein air landscape painting, he moved to Paris in 1859. He soon met future Impressionists Camille Pissarro and Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Renoir and Monet began painting outdoors together in the late 1860s, laying the foundations of Impressionism. In 1874, with Pissarro and Edgar Degas, Monet helped organize the Société Anonyme des Artistes, Peintres, Sculpteurs, Graveurs, etc. (Anonymous Society of Artists, Painters, Sculptors, Engravers, etc.), which was the formal name of the Impressionists’ group.

During the 1870s, Monet developed his technique for rendering atmospheric outdoor light, using broken, rhythmic brushwork. Both the public and critics did not like his work, complaining that his paintings were formless, unfinished, and ugly. As a result, he and his family endured abject poverty. By the 1880s, however, tastes began to change and his paintings started selling. Pissarro accused him of commercialism, and younger painters called him passé (outdated), as he remained loyal to the Impressionists’ early goal of capturing the effects of nature through direct observation.

In 1890, Monet began creating paintings in series, depicting the same subject under various conditions and at different times of the day. His later pictures, made when he had begun to lose his eyesight, are shimmering pools of color almost totally without form.

Questions

Write or discuss your responses.

• What was the goal of the Impressionists’ style?

• What criticism did Monet receive about his paintings?

A French term meaning painting outdoors in natural light instead of in a studio.

In late 19th-century France, some artists painted pictures that look like they were quickly sketched, using lots of small dots and strokes of color to create scenes that capture feelings and moments, like the way sunlight looks on water or the colors of a garden.