1840–1926
Claude Monet, born Oscar-Claude Monet on November 14, 1840, in Paris and raised in Le Havre, Normandy, began his artistic journey as a successful teenage caricaturist. His formal training started at the Le Havre secondary school of the arts in 1851, where he received his first drawing lessons from Jacques-François Ochard. Around 1858, he met Eugène Boudin, who became his pivotal mentor, introducing him to plein-air landscape painting; Monet later credited Boudin with everything he achieved in art. Following his mother's death in 1857, Monet lived with his supportive aunt Marie-Jeanne Lecadre before moving to Paris in 1859. There, he studied at the Académie Suisse, meeting Camille Pissarro, and later joined Charles Gleyre's studio at the École des Beaux-Arts, where he befriended Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Frédéric Bazille.
Monet worked in the Impressionist tradition, pioneering loose brushwork, vibrant colors, and the capture of fleeting light effects en plein air, rejecting academic rigidity for modern life's transient beauty. With Renoir, Pissarro, and others, he laid Impressionism's foundations through outdoor painting in the late 1860s and co-organized the group's first exhibition in 1874 as part of the Société Anonyme des Artistes Peintres, Sculpteurs, Graveurs—the name from which "Impressionism" derived, inspired by his *Impression, Sunrise* (1872). Key early works include *The Beach at Sainte-Adresse* (1867), *Arrival of the Normandy Train, Gare Saint-Lazare* (1877), and landscapes like *La Grenouillère* (1869).
In 1883, Monet settled in Giverny, purchasing the property in 1890 and transforming its gardens into subjects for his late masterpieces, including the haystack series like *Stacks of Wheat (End of Summer)* (1890–1891), Rouen Cathedral views (1892–1894), and over 250 *Water Lilies* paintings begun in 1899. He married Camille Doncieux in 1870, fathering sons Jean (1867) and Michel (1878); after her 1879 death, he wed Alice Hoschedé in 1892, blending their families. Despite cataracts in later years, Monet's obsessive series work bridged Impressionism to modernism, profoundly influencing abstract art and securing his legacy as its preeminent founder. His Giverny home, now a museum, draws millions, preserving the gardens that fueled his vision until his death on December 5, 1926.
