A short biography about Claude Monet. Claude Monet. Biography and paintings. Military service

Very often this artist is confused with his fellow artist Edouard Manet. Both of them are artists, but of very different styles... Although in some places they even agree in their canvases, they are still different. And their ways of starting development are different. But still about Claude Monet. This artist started with caricature. Yes, from perhaps the easiest and most difficult genre of painting. His cartoons appeared from his school days, when, not wanting to study, he drew more and more. I drew my classmates, my teachers, my neighbors. Monet did not live up to the hopes of his parents, did not continue his father’s work, but he became famous throughout Le Havre, the city where he lived, thanks to his caricatures. Moreover, to the surprise of his parents, he began to earn money from this, selling his works to those whom he portrayed for twenty francs. There were so many cartoons that in a local shop they were displayed in several rows in the window. There, in this showcase, paintings by another artist, Eugene Boudin, were sold. On the contrary, the works of this artist were not appreciated and were even considered vulgar, although they were only local landscapes. And young Monet was infuriated that Boudin’s works took up a lot of space and he could not display more of his own. The shop owner tried many times to introduce them, but it still didn’t work out. But one day it did happen, and from that time on it is believed that Monet began to turn from a caricaturist into a painter.

It was Boudin who became Monet's first teacher. It was he who gave him his first skills as a painter. He taught me how to draw not only caricatures, but also how to simply depict landscapes, still lifes, and portraits. And he discovered a different world of painting, an internal one, which is not visible to everyone.

Somehow then almost everything started to work out successfully. It was Boudin who insisted that the guy visit Paris and try to find out about admission to the Academy of Arts. Monet's parents were neither against nor for... they hesitated, but still allowed their son to simply go on reconnaissance... And Claude Monet ended up in Paris. And he immediately visited an exhibition of artists, and then showed his works himself. They were praised, but still drew attention to some shortcomings. Monet decides to stay in Paris as long as he can hold out. The parents stopped helping because their son had no intention of studying. It’s good that there was an aunt who supplied him with money, and then actually saved his life by paying him off from the army, where he managed to catch a “fashionable” disease - typhoid fever. Then he tried to enter the University at the Faculty of Arts, but he got bored there and left. And ends up in Gleyer's studio. There he meets Basil, Sisley and Renoir. It was these artists who would later become the backbone of the impressionist group and the artistic movement in general - impressionism, the name of which was given to this movement by Claude Monet. And it all started with his canvas – “Impression. Rising Sun". This is the beginning of something that still amazes many and at the same time causes quite a lot of controversy. Until now, mind you.

Further, Monet was not broken by personal losses. He lost his first wife, then, having married a second time, he lost this wife too. The most devastating thing is the loss of a son. And then he himself became seriously ill, and this illness threatened him with the fact that he would stop painting. Double cataracts were a disease that stood in his way, but after undergoing two operations he did not give up his talent and continued to create. And then the unexpected happened: due to operations and changes in the eye, he began to see some colors in ultraviolet light. And that’s why he saw some colors completely differently. Before last day Monet did not lower his brush, he painted canvases and continued to amaze his fans with his talent.

Alexey Vasin

Creation

The rapid development of European painting at the end of the 19th century provoked an involuntary crisis of the genre. Despite the fact that Europe of those years gave the world many talented artists, society felt tired of the social themes that had become too common in painting. The artists themselves are also dissatisfied.

Claude Monet, considered the founder of French impressionism, at the beginning of his career was faced with both rejection of the movement he initiated and enthusiastic enthusiasm for it. It all started after returning from London, the artist created a landscape in one evening that depicted the setting sun illuminating the sea with red rays. Monet simply called the painting “Sunrise. Impression".

By this he wanted to emphasize that he did not try to sketch nature exactly, but to convey only the impression of what he experienced while looking at the sunrise. The picture created an unexpected sensation. Some critics were dissatisfied with such a frivolous approach to painting, others were delighted, as they discovered a new way of conveying reality.

Impressionism (from the French "impression") is characterized by a subtle approach to depicting reality. Only the first impression is sketched; dynamic strokes convey the movement of the texture of clothing, hair, trees, water and even air. Impressionist paintings are airy, moving, full of pure colors and delicate halftones.

Monet's paintings fully corresponded to this style. At the beginning of the 20th century, the artist created a number of landscape paintings that made him famous for many decades to come. Such paintings include “Water Lilies”, “Mannaport”, “Water Lilies”, “Field of Poppies at Argenteuil”. All these paintings are painted with light strokes that convey the breath and tissue of living and inanimate matter. Tired of serious topics, society reacted with gratitude and delight to the simple subjects in Monet’s paintings.

The artist concentrates on conveying the mood of the same place at different times of the year and day. Then the famous series of paintings “Haystack” was born. Describing the same theme over and over again, Monet finds new angles, new solutions in conveying reality.

The artist has a special perception and style of conveying the color white. In his paintings there seems to be no pure white color. Instead, white water lilies, white foam on the waves, and clouds have bluish, bluish and lilac shades. Monet, like other impressionists, avoided the color black in his paintings. They used purple paints instead.

Many of Monet's paintings are characterized by a romantic and airy perception of city landscapes. The artist’s painting “Parliament Buildings at Sunset” is one of the most expensive paintings in the world. Monet managed to capture the London Parliament there, shrouded in the famous fog and clouds.

The paintings of Claude Monet are a kind of measure of the artistic value of impressionism. His canvases adorn the world's largest museums, including the St. Petersburg Hermitage and the Pushkin Museum in Moscow.

Igor Chergeiko

Impressionism

The principle of optical color mixing, based on natural phenomena actually seen and perceived by the artist, was used by the masters of impressionism with great artistic freedom. The special expressiveness of the texture of their paintings is not an end in itself, but a necessary way of expressing these creative aspirations. The Impressionists “sought to leave traces in painting of how it was made. They needed the viewer not to forget that he was standing on the line between a mirror illusion and a canvas splattered with paints,” writes M. V. Alpatov. “Only then will a “miracle of art” take place before his eyes.

The peculiar impression of the unfinished nature of impressionist paintings, which so confused the contemporary viewer, is a consequence of their desire to capture ephemerality, mobility, “non-constancy” visible world. The later works of the Neo-Impressionists (more precisely, Divisionists) with their rational theory of color separation and neutralization of the artist’s handwriting were largely deprived of such freedom and artistry. The desire of the impressionists to “paint with color” and the almost complete disappearance of line (drawing) in some works make it very difficult and sometimes impossible to reproduce their paintings in black and white.

The Impressionists were principled opponents of any theorizing. According to Monet's definition, art is “a free and feeling interpretation of nature... theories cannot create pictures.” The so-called theory of impressionism arose later; it was based on the artistic discoveries of the masters of this movement, on their ability to see the world directly, intuitively, on the figurative, non-conceptual thinking inherent in impressionism. The impressionists’ absolute trust in their visual perception, their desire to paint “only what they see, and the way they see”20 gave rise to a new value convention in art. And here it is appropriate to recall the words of Charles Baudelaire, spoken by him in 1859, on the threshold of the emerging impressionism: “Sometimes the obviously conventional turns out to be infinitely closer to the truth, and most of our landscape painters lie precisely because they are trying to be too truthful.”

However, as impressionism evolved, already from the late 1870s, the “deliberately conventional” in it increasingly began to gravitate towards decorativism: a consistent weakening of plastic aspects in painting (space and volume), the establishment of a flat pictorial surface, the replacement of natural color vision with conventional tonal effects , “filtering” the colorful diversity of the depicted world, dividing the composition according to the principle of comparing color zones - qualities that connect impressionism with some trends in the art of the turn of the century. And yet, decorativeness never became the main principle of the impressionistic style, even in the late period of Monet’s work: local “planar” color and linearity are alien to the very poetics of impressionism.

As already mentioned, impressionism did not arise suddenly. Many of his discoveries were prepared by the art of the 19th century; they seemed to be floating in the air. Let us at least remember the amazing words that O. Balzac put into the mouth of the old artist from the story “The Unknown Masterpiece”: “Strictly speaking, drawing does not exist! Don't laugh, young man... A line is a way by which a person is aware of the effect of lighting on the appearance of an object. But in nature, where everything is convex, there are no lines: only modeling creates a drawing, that is, highlighting an object in the environment where it exists. Only the distribution of light gives visibility to bodies!.. Isn’t this how the sun, the divine painter of the world, works? Oh nature, nature! Who has ever managed to catch your elusive form? Balzac created the story in 1830; At the same time, in the dynamic, colorful painting of E. Delacroix, in the romantic paintings of J. M. W. Turner, in the landscapes of R. P. Bonington and J. Constable with their ever-changing skies, what was later adopted by the emerging impressionism. The immediate predecessors of Monet, C. Pissarro and A. Sisley include C. Corot, landscape painters of the Barbizon school (especially the most poetic of them, C. Daubigny), as well as Monet’s future teachers E. Boudin and I. B. Yonkind.

And yet, impressionism was a fundamentally new word in European art. Now, viewed from a long distance, it itself has acquired the character of the “classical” era of French painting. However, we must not lose sight of the fact that impressionism in painting went through a rather complex evolution: a new artistic vision of the world crystallized gradually, individual (noted above) features of the poetics of impressionism had a relatively greater or lesser degree of significance at different times and among different masters. Conventionally, the history of pictorial impressionism can be divided into periods of preparation (maturation of a new method) - the 1860s, heyday and struggle for a new art - the 1870s, beginning in the 1880s, the years of crisis and creative differences (the last, 8th exhibition of the Impressionists 1886 coincided with the collapse of the group) and late - from the 1890s until the end of the lives of Degas, Renoir, Monet.

In none of these periods of its development was impressionism the absolutely dominant direction in French art. At the same time, J. O. D. Ingres, C. Corot, G. Courbet, J. F. Millet - representatives of the older generation - continued to work with young artists; the history of impressionism chronologically includes the entire history of so-called post-impressionism (Van Gogh, Cezanne, Gauguin, also Seurat, Signac, Toulouse-Lautrec). Almost simultaneously with impressionism, symbolism was born in art; during the lifetime of the oldest impressionists, the Fauvists and the birth of cubism took place. That is why some aspects of impressionism are now much more clearly perceived in the mirror of contemporary and later movements in art: almost none of the significant French artists of the late 19th century escaped the influence of impressionism. Creatively rethinking the lessons of impressionism and fundamentally rejecting much of it, these artists went further and laid the foundation for the art of our century.

In this “double perspective” of impressionism, Claude Monet has a very prominent, but not exclusive place in the movement itself. Being primarily a landscape painter, he sought to restore lost ideas about the unity of the world, where man is inextricably linked with nature and his environment. Monet discovered and brought to almost complete exhaustion some special qualities of the impressionistic perception of nature, the elements of light and air, in other words, the plein air side of impressionism, leaving other masters to develop other aspects of impressionist poetics.

Monet became the recognized leader of the Impressionists due to the exceptional qualities of his nature: strong-willed, energetic and purposeful, he found himself at the center of the struggle for new art, took an active part in organizing most exhibitions of artists of this movement, and led the fight for posthumous recognition of the work of Edouard Manet. Always doubting his capabilities and always searching, Monet, nevertheless, always knew how to cheer up his friends and instill in them faith in their abilities. Even for the distrustful, withdrawn Cézanne, who moved so far away from everyone else in his late work, Monet remained the only authority to whose opinion he invariably listened.

Svetlana Murina

The paradox of Monet's work

In two landscapes painted in Paris on the day of the national holiday of June 30, 1878, Monet seems to expose to us the very process of creating a painting. He feverishly rushes to capture the sight that accidentally opens from the window - a sea of ​​tricolor flags fluttering in the wind, the festive jubilation of the crowd.

The barely outlined vertical lines of the houses are reminiscent of the outlines of a street stretching into the distance; the drawing is entirely dissolved in a whirlwind of rich strokes of red, blue, and white. Monet's temperamental brushwork in these works anticipates the late Van Gogh, but how different is this excitement of the artist, captured by the beauty of the motif, from the inner turmoil that is read in the works of the Dutch master! Again, as in the landscape “Impression. Sunrise,” we can state the paradox of Monet’s work: the greater the spontaneity of perception, the artist’s trust in his eye and first sensation, the further he is from the objective perception of reality, the more deformed the subject of his image.

If a photographer had captured the view of the street of Saint-Denis on the same day, then everything torn, fragmented, in the process of becoming, which is so striking in Monet’s painting, would have appeared stopped, ordered and, probably, more prosaic. Monet least of all achieves the illusion of reality: through the decomposition of the visual image into individual color elements, the emancipation of color separated from objects, the dematerialization of the material world, he leads the viewer to synthesis, a holistic perception of what is depicted. This “suggestive transformation” of the image requires special tension from today’s viewer, accustomed to many extremes in modern fine art, when getting acquainted with Monet’s paintings.

In the fall of 1878, Monet rented a house in the small town of Vétheuil near the capital. The family of the bankrupt banker and collector Hoschede settled here with him, his seriously ill wife and two children. Camille Monet died in September 1879; for the last time the artist paints her face, but this time Camilla’s appearance eludes the artist, he is immersed in a restless sea of ​​intersecting strokes of faded shades of lilac, blue, yellow. Their light web is like a mysterious cover separating life from death. Much later, Monet told Georges Clemenceau: “Once, standing at the head of a deceased woman who had always been very dear to me, I caught myself looking at her tragic forehead, mechanically looking for traces of the consistently increasing degradation of color that death had caused in this motionless face. Shades of blue, yellow, gray - how can I know what they are! This is what I have come to... This is how, under the influence of our inherent automatism, we first respond to the influence of color, and then our reflexes, regardless of our will, again include us in the unconscious process of a monotonously flowing life. Like a beast that turns a millstone."

This recognition allows us to see the hidden drama of Monet's work. The artist was often and unfairly reproached for dispassion, for the absolute predominance of optical perception over emotional perception. Meanwhile, the aestheticization of the image itself, in this case the image of death, is an act of will that transforms the initial motive impulse into an artistic experience. Feeling underlies Monet's work no less than visual impression; even in the serene contemplation of the late cycle of “water lilies” (discussed below), notes of genuine elegiac poetry are heard. The clear and optimistic mood of most of Monet's works is the side that is addressed to the viewer, as well as the restrained, calm manners of the artist, which invariably attracted the sympathy of his contemporaries. For impressionist artists (primarily Monet and Renoir), such an internal dissonance between life and creativity constitutes the innermost essence of their art, it must always be kept in mind: without this, the assessment of the work of the masters of impressionism becomes one-sided and simplified.

Monet's painful experiences, which darkened the first year of his stay in Vétheuil, were expressed with unexpected force in the gloomy and melancholy winter landscapes of this time (“Snow Effect at Vétheuil”, 1878, Louvre, Paris; “Entering Vétheuil”, 1879, Art Museum, Gothenburg ) with their feelings of loneliness and numbness. Monet's financial situation became especially difficult after Camille's death, when he found himself with the large family- his two young sons were raised together with the five children of Alice Hoschede, who became their second mother (Monet’s marriage to Alice was formalized only in 1892). Only after organizing a small personal exhibition in 1880 in the premises of the editorial office of the magazine La Vie Moderne did Monet, with the support of Durand-Ruel and the publisher Charpentier, gain confidence in his financial affairs. From now on, he was freed from the worries of selling his works and could devote himself entirely to creativity.

Since the early 1880s, Monet's painting style has gradually changed. He increasingly works in the studio; in his paintings sometimes that “madeness” appears, which can be considered a compromise between working according to the first impression and the reflective consciousness of the artist working from memory. An example of this approach to creating a landscape is the large painting “Lavacourt” (1880, Museum of Fine Arts, Dallas), intended for the Salon. Despite the fact that this landscape was extremely poorly placed in the exhibition (at a height of almost six meters from the floor, in close surroundings of other works - such an absurd hanging of paintings was always practiced in the Salons), it was noted by critics. One of them (Chenneviere) even wrote that “the light and clear atmosphere made all the other neighboring landscapes in this Salon gallery seem black.” However, by this time impressionism had already gained a strong place - at least in the minds of critics.

Even such a fundamental “subverter” of Monet, as the famous symbolist writer J.C. Huysmans, changed his attitude towards the artist after the seventh exhibition of the Impressionists (1882): “How true are the foam on the waves caught in a ray of light, the rivers shimmering in thousands shades of objects that they reflect; in his canvases the cold breath of the sea resembles the fluttering of leaves, the light rustle of grass... it is to him and his fellow impressionists, masters of landscape, that we should be grateful for the revival of the art of painting. Messrs. Pissarro and Monet finally emerged victorious from a difficult struggle. We can say that the complex problem of light is resolved in their canvases...”

Huysmans' characterization can be attributed to that stage of Monet's work that the artist himself considered passed. The search for new themes and images leads him to the creation of a whole series of still lifes, executed in the early 1880s; like landscape, this genre was Monet’s favorite area of ​​creativity. “Cakes” (1882, private collection, Paris) is an example of a typically impressionistic composition, where the connection between objects and even their location seem random (some are cut off by the edge of the frame). Seen from a close distance, this fragment of inanimate nature is perceived as a landscape with an undefined (and therefore infinite) depth, where a white tablecloth with cold blue reflexes looks like a snow-covered space. The best still lifes of this time are images of flowers and fruits. Their decorative linearity, inscribed in a narrow vertical format (“Dahlias” and “White Poppy”, 1883, private collections), anticipate the birth of the Art Nouveau style in French art.

In the 1880s, Monet quite often turned to a “pure” portrait - usually a bust image on a neutral background. Monet was not a master psychological portrait in the meaning of the word that is applicable to E. Manet or E. Degas. It would be more accurate to say that he never sought to cross the line that would lead to penetration into the inner world of another person. Monet's portraits are characterized primarily by his own inner isolation and emotional restraint; he endows those portrayed with his own mood, and this gives them a touch of coldish aloofness. The models of Monet's portraits are inevitably self-absorbed, they are inactive (despite the liveliness of the artist's brush), disconnected from the environment and seem to be in an insubstantial world. An excellent example of such self-characterization is “Self-Portrait with a Beret” (1886, private collection, Paris).

Oscar Claude Monet - French artist, founder of impressionism. He painted more than 25 paintings. The most famous: "Impression. The Rising Sun", "Water Lilies", "Rouen Cathedral" and the portrait of Camille Doncier.

Date of birth: November 14, 1840 (Paris). When he was five years old, his relatives emigrated to live in Normandy, in Le Havre. There he gained early popularity... The father hoped that his son would become a merchant, but he was more drawn to art. While still at school, he drew satirical drawings on the covers of his teachers’ notebooks and achieved perfection in this! Already at the age of 15 he became a famous cartoonist in the city. People came to him from everywhere and asked him to draw portraits. For this he charged them 20 francs.

His works were displayed in the window of the only art supplies shop...But they were not alone, next to them were also seascapes by the artist Eugene Boudin. Oscar Monet really did not like these landscapes; they seemed disgusting to him and so did the person who painted them. The shop owner wanted to introduce them, but young Oscar refused. Soon they got to know each other anyway and were even able to become friends. Since Claude Monet was just learning to paint, Boudin agreed to become his teacher. He instilled in him a love of nature and said that real art is landscapes. He explained all the most difficult things in accessible and understandable language.

Thus, the young Oscar Monet decided to go to Paris to consult with other artists, attend an exhibition, gain and hone his drawing skills. But since the parents could not provide their son with funds for a long time, they sent him on a short trip for two months. Oscar, having visited the capital, decided to stay forever. And then his parents stopped sending him money. Fortunately, in the future, his aunt helped him in every possible way with finances.

In 1860 he was called up to serve in the army, he ended up in Algeria, and there he caught infection, and his aunt helped him out by buying him off his military duty. A year later he returned to his homeland.

He enrolled in a higher education institution for a special faculty, but changed his mind about studying and went to the painting studio founded by Charles Gleyre. He met with Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley, Frederic Bazille and together they organized a community of impressionists.

In 1866 he painted a portrait of the model Camille Doncier, which brought him more greater success, and she herself married him in 1870 and gave birth to two sons.

In 1879, after living for a few years, his wife dies of tuberculosis. Then in 1892 he remarried, to Alice Hosched. In 1911, she also dies, and a little later, three years later, so does one of his sons. Claude Monet himself died in 1926 from lung cancer.

Interesting fact

In 1912, Monet was diagnosed with cloudy lenses in both eyes, underwent surgery twice, and as a result, he began to see colors differently. For example, when painting “Water Lilies” in 1915, they seemed blue to him, although in fact they were white.

Biography 2

A crater on the planet Mercury is named after this impressionist artist; his paintings are valued at millions of dollars and are wildly popular among connoisseurs of beauty in the USA, Great Britain, and Russia. It's about about the great French artist, innovating painter - Claude Monet.

He was born in Paris in November 1840; later Monet's family moved to Normandy, where the boy spent his childhood. Claude's father hoped that when his son grew up, he would run a grocery store, which was inherited, however, little Monet was interested in drawing, and he was especially good at caricatures. As a young man, Claude met the painter Eugene Boudin; it was he who discovered the options for painting en plein air for the future founder of impressionism.

In 1861, Monet was drafted into the army in Algeria, but the artist fell ill with typhus, and his aunt ransomed her nephew so that he could return and continue his studies in drawing.

An aspiring artist is skeptical about the then popular style of painting - episodes historical events, religious sketches. Monet visits the studio of Charles Gleyre, where he meets his like-minded people and friends: Renoir, Sisley, Basil. Cezanne, Pissarro.
"Impression. Sunrise”, the famous painting by Monet was first presented to the public in Paris in 1974 and was widely discussed by critics, thanks to this resonance the names of an unusual painting movement for that time appeared - impressionism. Artists of this movement suggested capturing the moment here and now. Monet's paintings were made in a completely new unique technique - relief strokes; he also came up with the idea of ​​​​applying paint directly to the picture, without using a palette. The artist pays special attention to light; Monet could paint the same image of nature, buildings in different periods of time in order to capture all the nuances of chiaroscuro.

Claude Monet's model and future wife, Camille Doncieux, was his muse for a long time (the paintings “Camille, or Portrait of a Lady in Green”, “Camille in a Japanese Kimono”), and gave him two children. At this time, Monet's painting style became more and more confident and expressive.
In 1871, the artist and his family moved to England due to the outbreak of war in France.
Here, Monet’s works begin to show lightness; he is captivated by fogs, vapors, and airiness.

At 32, Monet's muse Camille dies of tuberculosis. The artist has been living and working in his hometown for a long time. In 1892, the creator married Alice Hosched for the second time.

Living in Giverny, Monet created his own unique garden. He grows the most beautiful flowers, and then, armed with paints and an easel, depicts scenes on canvas. This is how the master’s famous painting “Pond with Water Lilies” appears.

The year 1912 became difficult for the artist; his perception of color changed dramatically due to the discovery of a disease - cataracts. In December 1926, at the age of 86, Monet passed away. The funeral of the outstanding impressionist was very modest, but the legacy that he left behind is extremely highly valued by his contemporaries.

Ludwig van Beethoven comes from a musical family. As a child, the future composer was introduced to playing musical instruments such as organ, harpsichord, violin, and flute.

Name: Claude Monet (Oscar Claude Monet)

Zodiac sign: Scorpion

Age: 86 years old

Place of Birth: Paris, France

Activity: painter, one of the founders of impressionism

Tags: painter

Family status: widower

Oscar Claude Monet is a great impressionist who devoted his entire life to painting. The artist is the founder and theoretician of French impressionism, which he followed throughout his entire creative career. Monet's painting style in impressionism is considered classic. It is characterized by separate strokes of pure color that create a richness of light when conveying the air. In his paintings, the artist tried to convey a momentary impression of what was happening.

Claude Monet was born in Paris on February 14, 1840. When he was five years old, the family moved to Normandy, to Le Havre. At school, the boy did not differ in anything special, except for his ability to draw. His parents owned a grocery store, which they wanted to pass on to their son. Contrary to his father's hopes, Claude was drawn to painting from an early age, drew caricatures and did not think about being a grocer.

At a local salon, Claude's best-selling caricatures were sold for twenty francs. The young man’s acquaintance with the landscape painter Eugene Boudin, a lover of plein air, also contributed to his hobby. The artist showed the aspiring painter the main techniques of painting from life. His aunt, who took care of the guy after his mother’s death, also helped defend his right to choose a profession.

Classes with Boudin revealed to the aspiring artist his true calling - to paint nature from life. In 1859, Claude went home to Paris. Here he works in a studio for poor artists, goes to exhibitions and galleries. The development of talent was hindered by military service. In 1861, Monet was recruited for military service in the cavalry troops and sent to Algeria.

Of the 7 required years in service, he will remain in service for 2 years because he will fall ill with typhus. Three thousand francs, which his aunt paid to buy his nephew out of military service, also helped him return home. Having recovered from his illness, Monet entered the university’s Faculty of Arts, but was immediately disappointed. He did not like the prevailing approach to painting there.

The desire to learn leads him to the studio founded by Charles Gleyre. Here he meets Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley and Frederic Basil. At the Academy he had his first acquaintance with Pissarro and Cézanne. The aspiring artists were the same age and had similar views on art. They soon became the backbone that united the Impressionists.

The portrait of Camille Doncier, painted by the artist in 1866 and exhibited in the salon, made him famous. His first serious work was the painting “Luncheon on the Grass” (1865-1866), painted by him after the work of the same name by Edouard Manet. Claude's version was 4 times larger in size. The composition of the picture is very simple - a group of elegant women and men are located in a clearing near the forest.

The value of the painting lies in the feeling of air movement, enhanced by textured strokes. It was not included in the exhibition because the artist did not have time to complete the large canvas. Financially strapped, Claude was forced to sell the painting in order to forget about hunger and not borrow from friends. Instead, the artist exhibited “The Lady in Green” (portrait of K. Donsier).

The next 2-meter canvas, “Woman in the Garden,” was painted entirely en plein air. To catch the necessary lighting, the artist dug a trench, thanks to which it was possible to move the canvas up and down. I had to wait a long time for the right lighting, and only then get to work. Despite his desire to achieve perfection, the salon jury rejected the work.

The new direction in painting, called “impressionism,” was a revolution in painting. Feeling the immediacy of what is happening and conveying it on canvas is a task that the impressionists tried to accomplish. Claude Monet was a prominent representative and founder of this trend. He was a plein air artist, conveying the natural, momentary beauty of the world around him.

In the summer of 1869, together with Renoir, he went to the open air in Bougeville. In his new works, painted with large impasto strokes, he abandons mixed shades. He paints in pure color and makes a large number of discoveries for himself regarding painting techniques, the characteristics of chiaroscuro, the influence of surrounding shades on the color, etc. This is how impressionism arose and developed - an innovative movement in fine art.

With the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War, Claude Monet, trying to evade the army, goes to England. He did not support Napoleon III and was his staunch opponent. In England he meets Paul Durand-Ruel, a painting seller. They will be good friends and partners. Paul will acquire from the artist most of the paintings from this period of his work.

The proceeds from the sale made it possible to buy a house in his homeland, in Argenteuil, where he lived for several happy years until 1878. During this period, the artist worked fruitfully, painted his paintings, including the famous work by Claude Monet “Impression. Sunrise". The title of this masterpiece expresses the essence of impressionism and was used by critics to define a new direction in painting. The work was exhibited in 1974 in Paris.

The artist devotes quite a lot of time to serial compositions: he depicts views of London, Rouen Cathedral, Haystacks, Poppies and other landscapes. In an impressionistic manner, it conveys unequal illumination depending on the weather, time of day and year, using a certain tonality of the palette for each state. It is difficult to find words to describe the paintings of the legendary impressionist; they need to be felt and understood.

Having saved up some money, Monet entrusts financial affairs to E. Gosheda. The bankruptcy of an entrepreneur forces the families to pool their capital and move to the village of Vétheuil. Here in his biography happen tragic events, associated with the death of his wife, and then his son. In 1883, Monet's family moved to the village of Giverny, which is located on the picturesque banks of the Seine. During this period, his paintings sold well, he accumulated a decent fortune, part of which he spent on expanding his garden.

It is known that the popular artist was also a gardener who created his garden over the course of 43 years. He found pleasure not only in growing plants but also in contemplating the results of his labors. In the last years of his life, Monet went out with an easel into his luxurious garden and painted a lot. A great worker and “slave of his craft,” as he called himself, he wanted to achieve perfection in transferring the beauty of the surrounding world to canvas.

At this time, the artist masters a new technique. He paints several paintings in parallel. In this way he tries to capture the changing lighting. A painting session on one painting could last thirty minutes, then he would move on to another in order to capture and convey another momentary impression. For example, a series of his works depicting Cape Antibes are presented in morning, afternoon, autumn, summer and spring lighting.

The artist’s first wife was Camille Doncier, who posed for him for “Lady in Green” and other paintings. She gave birth to 2 sons eleven years apart. After the death of his beloved wife, who was also his constant model, the artist began a relationship with Alisa Goshede. They will officially legitimize their relationship after the death of her husband Ernest. Alice died in 1911, and 3 years later his eldest son Jean passed away.

The work of Claude Monet is one of the three most expensive painters. The average cost of paintings is $7.799 million. The most expensive of them (“Water Lilies”, (1905) is estimated at $43 million. The works are in museums around the world. The Russian Federation, Great Britain and America are considered the major owners of the artist’s heritage.

The artist lived long life, he underwent 2 operations to remove cataracts, after which his color perception changed. He began to see ultraviolet in purple or blue. This can be seen in his works written after the operation. An example of such a painting is “Water Lilies”. During this period, most of the time he is in the garden, creating on his canvases a mysterious world of water and plants. His famous series of recent panels features a variety of ponds with water lilies and other aquatic plants.

The artist died in Giverny on December 5, 1926 from lung cancer at the age of 86, having outlived many people dear to him. At his request, the farewell ceremony was simple and uncrowded. Fifty people came to say goodbye to the artist. He was buried in the church cemetery.

The most famous paintings

• "Women in the Garden" (1866)
• "Terrace at Sainte-Adresse" (1867)
• "The Thames Below Westminster (Westminster Bridge)" (1871)
• "Impression: The Rising Sun" (1872)
• "Field of poppies near Argenteuil" (1873)
• "Boulevard des Capucines" (1873)
• "Walk to the Cliff at Pourville" (1882)
• "Lady with an Umbrella" (1886)
• "Rouen Cathedral: Main Entrance to the Sun" (1894)
• "Water Lilies" ("Nymphaeas") (1916)

The most expensive paintings

• “Water Lilies”, (1905) – $43 million.
• “Railway Bridge at Argenteuil” (1873) - $41 million.
• "Water Lilies" (1904) - $36 million.
• "Waterloo Bridge. Cloudy" (1904) - $35 million.
• “Path to the Pond” (1900) - $32 million.
• “Water Lily Pond” (1917) - $24 million.
• "Poplars" (1891) - $22 million.
• "Houses of Parliament. Sunlight in the Fog (1904) - $20 million.
• "Parliament, Sunset" (1904) - $14 million.

While his mother supported his artistic endeavors, his father wanted him to continue the family business. After the death of his mother in 1857, Monet found an ally in his aunt, Marie Jeanne Lecadre, an amateur artist who took on much of the responsibility for Claude's future.

Around 1856, under the guidance of the artist Louis Eugene Boudin, he began to paint outdoor landscapes. In 1859, Monet arrived in Paris, where he met the artist Camille Pissarro, one of the founders of impressionism.

In 1860, Claude Monet was called up for military service in Algeria; in 1862, due to illness, he returned to Le Havre and again began painting views of the coast together with Boudin. He soon met the Danish landscape painter Jan Barthold Jongkind, who became his second teacher.

In November 1862, Monet went to Paris, where he studied in the studio of Charles Gleyre and met the artists Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley and Frédéric Bazille.

In 1863-1865, Monet worked in the style of Courbet and the realistic school, but he was haunted by the idea of ​​painting compositions in the open air. The most famous of the works of this time, “Lunch on the Grass” (1866), was painted in the studio from sketches made in the open air. Two of Monet's seascapes were exhibited and well received at the 1865 Salon.

Developing the achievements of the masters of the Barbizon school, from the second half of the 1860s, the artist sought to convey through plein air painting the variability of the light-air environment, the colorful richness of the world, preserving the freshness of the first visual impression of nature.

At the end of 1870 Monet moved to England. In London, he and Pizarro met the painting dealer Paul Durand-Ruel, who made the Impressionist group famous.

The name “Impressionists” was assigned to the artists in 1874 after a joint exhibition in Paris, in which, in addition to Monet, Renoir, Pizarro, Degas, and Sisley participated. The reviewer called them “impressionists” (“impressionists”) in mockery when he saw the title of Monet’s painting “Impression. Sunrise” (L"impression. Soleil levant). Under this name, the painters performed at the third joint exhibition in 1877. In total, eight Impressionist exhibitions, the last of which took place in 1886.

In 1872-1876, Monet and his family lived in Argenteuil on the Seine near Paris. The artist often worked with Renoir, Sisley and Manet, creating scenes of boating and episodes of village life. Best works this period - "Regatta in Argenteuil" (1872), "Sailing boats. Regatta in Argenteuil" (1874), "Bridge in Argenteuil" (1874).

In 1883, Monet's first solo exhibition took place at the Durand-Ruel Gallery. At the same time, the artist settled in the Giverny estate on the banks of the Seine in Upper Normandy, with whom he connected the rest of his life. He laid out gardens there, which became an amazing phenomenon of gardening and at the same time a breeding ground for painting. The construction of a large pond with a wooden bridge is associated with Eastern traditions.

The transfer on canvas of the variability of light, the variety of atmospheric phenomena and changes in nature in different seasons brought Monet worldwide fame and prosperity by 1890. By this time, he began to work on several canvases simultaneously, conveying on each the lighting and state of the view in a certain rather short period of time, often working on one canvas for no more than half an hour. In the following days he continued to paint in the same sequence until all the canvases were completed. Among them are the series "Haystacks" (1890-1891), "Poplars" (1890-1892), "Rouen Cathedral" (1894), "Views of the Thames" (1899-1904) and "Venice" (started in 1908).

Since 1899, Monet created huge canvases depicting a pond in the garden at different times of the day; in 1904-1922 he worked on a series of panels called “Water Lilies”.

From 1908, his vision began to deteriorate, and in 1912 Monet was diagnosed with cataracts. In 1923, an operation restored the artist’s vision, and he was able to return to painting.

In 1924 he exhibited his "Water Lilies" in New York.

On May 17, 1927, an exhibition of Monet’s paintings with water lilies opened at the Tuileries Orangerie Museum in two specially built oval halls.

Claude Monet was married twice. He married his first wife, Camille Doncier, in 1870. Two sons were born into the family - Jean in 1867 and Michel in 1878. The birth of her second child weakened Camilla's fragile health, and she died in 1879. Monet painted her posthumous portrait.

In 1892, Monet married Alice Hoschede, the widow of businessman Ernest Hoschede, who had previously acquired the artist's paintings. From the early 1880s, Alice helped Monet run the household and raised his sons. Alice left six children from Ernest.

The painter's son Jean Monet married his half-sister, the artist Blanche Hoschede (1865-1947), who, after the death of her mother (1911) and husband (1914), cared for the elderly Claude Monet, and subsequently maintained the Giverny estate.

In 1980, the Giverny estate, where Claude Monet spent more than 40 years of his life, opened to visitors.

They are among the most expensive at auctions. In 2008, his 1919 painting of water lilies sold for $80.4 million.

"Water Lilies" by Claude Monet was sold at auction in New York for $54 million.

The material was prepared based on information from RIA Novosti and open sources

“He exhibited about 30 landscapes at the Salon, seemingly painted in one day. Now we can say with confidence: he has become such a nonentity that he will never rise again...", - wrote about Claude Monet (Oscar-Claude Monet) popular art critic of the Le Figaro newspaper.

For almost forty years this was echoed by his numerous colleagues, resolutely rejecting impressionism as a reckless phenomenon and an ulcer on the body of artistic art.

The sharks of the pen attacked Monet especially fiercely as the main instigator. However, the artist himself did not heed the criticism at all. And for good reason. Today, the contribution of the French impressionist to the development of world art is difficult to overestimate, as are the masterpieces he created.

It was the mid-1850s, but the rebellious spirit, as is typical among teenagers of all times, was eager to be unleashed. At that time, the future father of impressionism had not yet picked up a brush, but he was already good at using a pencil. In the most irreverent manner, he depicted his teachers and people famous in Le Havre, Monet’s hometown, in the margins of his notebooks.

The caricatures were so popular that a local paint dealer, to the delight of passing onlookers, installed them right in the window of his store. Monet later admitted that this made him literally burst with pride, until one day his sarcastic drawings had to sit side by side with the creations of another person.

“Who is this idiot who thinks he’s an artist?”, - a piqued Claude Monet asked a paint dealer. That idiot turned out to be a stooped and lanky former sailor - Eugene Boudin. Subsequently, when Monet pacified his pride, he became his first painting teacher. He also became the person who first brought the young artist to paint en plein air (French en plein air - “in the open air”). If until that moment Monet had used any excuse to avoid meetings with Boudin and his annoying insistence on studying academic drawing, then after working in the plein air he literally felt his eyes widen to the beauty of nature.

In 1861, as soon as Monet had time to inform his father, who was far from favorable to the artistic craft, about his intention to paint, his conscription into the army arrived. He was sent to Algeria, where the whole mission boiled down to ceremonial passages on horseback from one city to another in order to demonstrate the power of the French army. The artist, whose height was only 165 centimeters, was never chosen for such an important mission, and therefore his barracks life turned into sheer boredom. To Monet’s delight, his father and aunt agreed to buy him out of the army for a nominal fee: he was to enter an art school in Paris and study drawing from serious masters.

Monet actually entered Gleyre's workshop, which, however, he soon left, despite the threat of termination of sponsorship. However, those couple of years cannot be called useless: it was Gleyre, behind the teacher’s back, who formed a gang of future great artists. Basil, - all these are people who had yet to introduce the world to impressionism.

It must be said that this term arose spontaneously and was originally intended to be offensive. It all started with a painting that Monet first called “Ships Leaving the Port of Le Havre.” Later, for the exhibition of Les Misérables (as the artists unrecognized by the authoritative Paris Salon called themselves), he changed the name to “Impression. Rising Sun". A skeptical art critic, looking at the paintings of Monet and his comrades, declared that “what they have here is not painting, but only continuous impressions” (French impression - “impression”). The rejected ones gladly accepted the new name and began to be called Impressionists.

Fortunately, not all of the young impressionists were as poor as Monet, who lost his patronage. Before the collector and dealer of Durand-Ruel's paintings took him under his wing, the artist had to borrow from friends. The most generous of them was Basil, from whom Monet extracted money, not hesitating either blackmail or aggressive persistence. “I’m still waiting for my 50 francs from you...”, - all the surviving letters are full of statements similar to this.

An agreement with Durand-Ruel soon provided Monet with a carefree life in a small Parisian studio, where he could create freely, but was obliged to sell some of the paintings to a collector. Over two years of cooperation, he bought paintings from Monet for 21,800 francs. The artist had already said goodbye to black bread, if not for his passion for waste. As soon as a coin appeared, he ordered himself the best wines and liqueurs, went to an expensive tailor, hired a maid and a cook. It is not surprising that even after making money with his artistic talent, Monet remained a goldfinch with empty pockets and again took up begging for money from friends, whose generosity, as expected, was dwindling day by day.

But despite his difficult character and any shamelessness in matters of finance, Monet also had a fruitful friendship, for example, with Renoir. The artists repeatedly went out together in the open air; there is even a story of how Renoir painted Monet while he was capturing the garden in Argenteuil. Thus, the artistic heritage was replenished with two works at once: “The Garden at Argenteuil,” by Monet, and “Claude Monet Working in His Garden,” by Renoir.

Another iconic, although not so obviously characteristic of Monet’s style, painting “Lady in Green” opened a new chapter in the artist’s life. On it he first captured his beloved, sweet and modest Camilla.

Later she appeared on many of his canvases, and in the form of several girls at once. So on two truly gigantic canvases, “Breakfast on the Grass” and “Women in the Garden,” everything female figures written from Camilla.

None of them were accepted by the Salon, where Monet vainly hoped to exhibit them, although six decades later the French government nevertheless bought these works for fabulous money.

Camilla, albeit not immediately, nevertheless became Monet’s official wife, but their story was not destined to last long: the poor thing died at the age of 32. Even on her deathbed she served as a model for the artist.

“I suddenly realized that I was standing, staring at her temple, and mechanically looking for the transition of living color to dead... Blue, yellow, gray, I don’t know what else... That’s what I’ve come to. All this happened without me, automatically. First, shock and trembling from contemplating this color, and then a pure reflex, an unconscious desire to do what I have been accustomed to doing all my life...”, Monet wrote a little later.

However, the grief was as short-lived as the marriage itself. At the time of Camille's death, Claude had already been in a secret relationship for several years with the wife of his friend, art dealer Ernest Hoschede. She even had a child from him, whom the legal husband considered his own. After the time allotted for keeping up appearances, Alice Hoschede moved to live with Mona. So the artist acquired six more children, in addition to his two, born in his marriage to Camilla.

One of the eldest daughters, Suzanne, possessed such rare beauty and grace that one day, having accidentally noticed her standing on a hill with an umbrella, Monet decisively declared that tomorrow she would pose for him. The next day, the two of them returned to that hill, overgrown with grass and summer flowers, and the artist painted two paintings at once: “Woman with an umbrella, turning to the left” and “Woman with an umbrella, turning to the right.”

By 1880, Monet’s paintings had already acquired some value and the artist, who had never been distinguished by a gentle character, felt he had the right not only to charge a high price for his paintings, but also to refuse to sell them at all. When one day a famous opera singer came to Monet’s studio and noticed a landscape with a view of Vétheu, the artist shook his head:

“You have a bad memory, buddy. You once refused to buy this sketch for fifty francs. Now you can choose any other one, but I won’t give up this sketch to you for any money, even for fifty thousand!”