Claude Monet

Monet had just finished his studies when he painted Bazille and Camille. In 1862 he entered Charles Gleyre’s studio in Paris, among fellow students such as Frédéric Bazille, Alfred Sisley and Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Bazille, who according to Émile Zola was “tall and slim, with an extremely distinguished appearance”, formed a close friendship with Monet and not only modelled for him but also supported him financially. He bought the painting Women in the Garden (1867) for the princely sum of 2,500 francs, although he paid in such small instalments — 50 francs a month — that the perpetually indebted Monet often had to reproach him about the money. Tragically, Bazille was killed in the Franco-Prussian War in 1870.

From the page of Bazille and Camille (Study for “Luncheon on the Grass”)

Claude Monet (1840–1926), founder of Impressionism, spent his youth in Le Havre. He devoted his life to capturing changing light and later created the famous Water Lilies series in his garden at Giverny.

From the page of Garden at Sainte-Adresse

Although he did not like the Impressionist label, Monet used the word later, for example for his 1886 painting “The Sea (Impression)”. In 1926 Monet recalled: “…I think with indignation that I played a part in naming a group most of whose members had nothing to do with Impressionism.”

From the page of Impression, Sunrise

In the 1850s Monet was still completely unknown as an artist. Today he is celebrated above all as a brilliant landscape painter, but at the start of his career he made caricatures. As a teenager he earned a considerable sum with his ornate drawings of local notables, which he sold for 20 francs. Later in life Monet said that he could have become a millionaire from selling his caricatures. The caricatures often depicted their subjects with oversized noses and brilliantly brought out people’s distinctive features (pictured: Scotsman with His Bagpipes).

From the page of Poppy Field at Argenteuil

The Monet family lived from 1871 to 1878 in Argenteuil, then a rural riverside town near Paris. Édouard Manet, who supported the family financially in lean times and often visited them, helped them find their first rented house. Both Manet and Renoir portrayed the Monet family in charming pictures in their Argenteuil garden, symbolising a productive period when the three great figures of Impressionism worked closely together.

From the page of The Walk

After the peaceful garden and water depictions of the Argenteuil period, Monet’s Paris period is characterised by modern townscapes. Between 1876 and 1878 he painted the Parc Monceau (pictured, which had witnessed bloody events during the Commune of 1871), and in 1877 he completed his series of the Gare Saint-Lazare: in a dozen pictures he captured the steam locomotives whistling, thundering and belching smoke among the girder bridges and station roofs. After a while he longed for nature again, and in 1879 it was a great relief to him to settle in the countryside again, this time in a village called Vétheuil.

From the page of The Rue Montorgueil, Paris, Celebration of 30 June 1878

Monet’s first visit to Holland came at a time when he was trying to avoid his native country. After the Prussian occupation of France he fled to London at the end of 1870 and did not wish to return because of the bloody events of the Paris Commune in May 1871. Reassuringly conservative and with a special charm, Holland seemed a more attractive choice. The then unknown artist was accompanied by his first wife, Camille, his little son, Jean, and an acquaintance, Henry Havard. When he returned to Holland in 1886, he was already well known beyond the borders of France. A Dutch paper of 8 May 1886 commented on Monet’s visit that the artist “is making Impressionist studies of the tulip fields. The motley colours of the flowers, reminiscent of brilliant Persian carpets, undoubtedly exert a great attraction on the painter.”

From the page of Tulip Fields with the Rijnsburg Windmill

In early 1897, when Monet was working on the chrysanthemum paintings, his elder son, Jean, married Blanche Hoschedé, the second eldest daughter of Monet’s second wife, Alice. Tragedy, however, already overshadowed the family’s life: in February 1899, after a long illness, Alice’s eldest daughter, Suzanne (pictured), died at only thirty. Alice was inconsolable, and partly to comfort her Monet spent the following years in his garden rather than travelling to distant places to paint.

From the page of Chrysanthemums

Monet began working on his famous water-lily series in Giverny in the late 1890s. Shortly afterwards, however, in 1905, the first signs of cataracts appeared. His brushstrokes and pictures became more blurred, but worse still, the cataracts also seriously impaired his colour vision. He saw light less well, colours became blurred, the world swam in yellow, and purples and blues began to disappear. His works from 1918 to 1922 clearly betray this problem. Finally, in 1923, he agreed to have his right eye operated on. He would not allow his left eye to be operated on, however, so the balance of his colours was permanently upset. For an artist whose exceptional talent lay in wonderfully bringing colours to life, this was a tragic outcome indeed.

From the page of The Water-Lily Pond