During his long career, he was the most consistent and prolific practitioner of impressionism's philosophy of expressing one's perceptions before nature, especially as applied to outdoor landscape painting.
The term "Impressionism" is derived from the title of his painting Impression, soleil levant, exhibited in the 1874 initiated by Monet and his associates as an alternative to the Salon.
laude Monet was born on 14 November 1840 in Paris. In around 1858, he met fellow artist Eugène Boudin, who would encourage Monet to develop his techniques, teach him the "en plein air" (outdoor) techniques for painting and take Monet on painting excursions. Monet thought of Boudin as his master, whom "he owed everything to" for his later success.
In June 1861, Monet was called for military service and served under the Chasseurs d'Afrique (African Hunters), in Algeria. His time in Algeria had a powerful effect on Monet, who later said that the light and vivid colours of North Africa "contained the germ of my future researches".
Several of Monet’s paintings had been purchased by Gaudibert, who commissioned a painting of his wife, alongside other projects; the Gaudiberts were for two years "the most supportive of Monet's hometown patrons". Monet would later be financially supported by the artist and art collector Gustave Caillebotte, Bazille and perhaps Gustave Courbet, although creditors still pursued him.
onet's paintings from the 1870s reveal the major tenets of the impressionist vision. Along with Impression: Sunrise, Red Boats at Argenteuil (1875) is an outstanding example of the new style. In these paintings impressionism is essentially an illusionist style, albeit one that looks radically different from the landscapes of the Old Masters. The difference resides primarily in the chromatic vibrancy of Monet's canvases.
Working directly from nature, he and the impressionists discovered that even the darkest shadows and the gloomiest days contain an infinite variety of colors. To capture the fleeting effects of light and color, however, Monet gradually learned that he had to paint quickly and to employ short brushstrokes loaded with individualized colors. This technique resulted in canvases that were charged with painterly activity; in effect, they denied the even blending of colors and the smooth, enameled surfaces to which most earlier painting had persistently subscribed.
n 1883, Monet and his family rented a house and gardens in Giverny. The gardens were Monet's greatest source of inspiration for 40 years.
In 1890, Monet purchased the house. During the 1890s, Monet built a greenhouse and a second studio, a spacious building well lit with skylights.In 1899, he began painting the water lilies that would occupy him continuously for the next 20 years of his life, being his last and "most ambitious" sequence of paintings. He had exhibited this first group of pictures of the garden, devoted primarily to his Japanese bridge, in 1900. He returned to London—now residing at the prestigious Savoy Hotel—in 1899 to produce a series that included 41 paintings of Waterloo bridge, 34 of Charing Cross bridge and 19 of the House of Parliament.
he works—exotic coloration and mysterious romantic mood—recall the Thames paintings of Turner and James McNeill Whistler. In these paintings it is atmosphere, more than the particularities of these structures, that is Monet’s subject; buildings and bridges are less tangible than the pulsating brushstrokes that give volume to the light-filled fog and mist.
he first canvases he created depicting lilies, water, and the Japanese bridge were only about one square yard, but their unprecedented open composition, with the large blossoms and pads suspended as if in space, and the azure water in which clouds were reflected, implied an encompassing environment beyond the frame.This concept of embracing spatiality, new to the history of painting and only implicit in the first water-lily paintings, unfolded during the years from 1915 until the artist’s death into a cycle of huge murals to be installed in Paris in two 80-foot oval rooms in the Orangerie of the Tuileries.
Despite failing eyesight due to cataracts, Monet continued to paint almost until his death in 1926.
revival of interest in his work occurred in the early 1950s. Monet’s epic scale and formal innovations influenced Abstract Expressionist painters such as Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollock, and a general scholarly reassessment of his importance began to develop. Wildly popular retrospective exhibitions of his work toured the world during the last decades of the 20th century and established his unparalleled public appeal, sustaining his reputation as one of the most significant and popular figures in the modern Western painting tradition.