Claude Monet

Claude Monet

Claude Monet was born in Paris on November 14, 1840.

Drawing fascinated him from a young age, and his family did not oppose his calling. He began by placing caricatures at a stationery shop in Le Havre (where his family settled in 1845), where he met Eugène Boudin, who took him under his wing. He thus began to paint from nature (which was not very common at the time), outdoors. His early canvases, which enjoyed some success, led him to move to Paris and attend the Académie Suisse, where he met Camille Pissarro.

After his military service (interrupted due to typhoid fever), he met the Dutch painter Jongkind, who trained his eye and supplemented the instruction already provided by Boudin. Rebelling against academic painting, refusing to return to ancient canons, he left the École Impériale des Beaux-arts de Paris, taking with him other young painters who were eager for freedom: Bazille, Renoir, and Sisley.

He exhibited at the Salon de la Peinture et de la Sculpture (official and classic) in 1865 and began painting his "Luncheon on the Grass". It was around this time that he met the woman who would first be his model, then his wife, and the mother of his two sons: Camille Doncieux. His new paintings, painted in natural light, were rejected by the Salon the following year, and the numerous rejected works were also banned from holding an exhibition at the Salon des Refusés. Monet experienced very difficult financial situation, which even led him to attempt suicide in 1868. Often it was Frédéric Bazille, from a wealthy Protestant family, who supported the Monet family.

The war, declared in 1870, and Bazille's death on the battlefield, led Monet to leave for London. There he discovered the work of Turner and his treatment of light. He also met Paul Durand-Ruel, an art dealer, who would now be in charge of selling Monet's works. He continued his flight from France (and his military obligations) to the Netherlands, where he discovered Japanese prints.

With Durand-Ruel buying about thirty paintings from him, he was finally able to settle on the banks of the Seine, in Argenteuil, and acquire a studio boat that made it easier for him to paint.

In April 1874, the First Exhibition of Impressionist Painters (who were not yet called that) was organized in Nadar's studio on Boulevard des Capucines. Monet presented a landscape of Le Havre port: "Impression, Sunrise".

But the exhibition did not find its audience and ended with the bankruptcy of the association created to set it up. Ironically, a critic named these painters "Impressionists" in the Charivari newspaper! From mockery, to glory...

However, the following year, Durand-Ruel organized the second exhibition and both the public and the critics began to see this new way of painting as the emergence of true art. Following this exhibition, where he presented about twenty works, Monet was hired to work on the decoration of the Rottembourg Castle in Montgeron. It belonged to Ernest Hoschedé and his wife Alice, who came from a wealthy Belgian family.

The third Impressionist exhibition, which for the first time adopted the term that the painters deemed appropriate, was a real success, both publicly and critically.

The Monets and the Hoschedés (who had gone bankrupt) moved in together. Camille Monet's health was very fragile and she passed away after long suffering in 1879. Monet then broke with the other painters and entered a period where his paintings expressed his sadness.

In 1880, an exhibition featuring 18 of his paintings was entirely dedicated to him. Public and critical recognition followed. Moreover, the sales allowed him to settle all his debts.

The following year, Monet and his two sons, Alice Hoschedé and her five children all moved to Poissy (where real estate was cheaper). The relationship that Monet maintained with Alice, while she was still married, scandalized.

After two new exhibitions, notably organized by Durand-Ruel, Monet, Alice, and the seven children moved to Normandy and settled in Giverny in 1883. The painter never left, buying, when he could afford it (in 1890), the house he had initially rented and the adjoining garden.

Until 1890, he traveled in France and Europe (especially the Netherlands), painted a lot, changed dealers (leaving Durand-Ruel for the gallery owner Georges Petit), exhibited with Auguste Rodin, and solidified his reputation as a "modern painter" even across the Atlantic!

1890 marked a change in Monet's work, with the appearance of series. If it was sometimes implicit in the previous decade, it became a way of painting from then on. He chose a subject and worked on it under different lights. Thus, "The Haystacks" included about twenty versions. The following year, it was "The Poplars". In both cases, exhibitions were organized and met with great success. Sales were also there.

1892 is marked by the beginning of his work on Rouen Cathedral and by his marriage to Alice (who became a widow the previous year). His paintings were selling very well and more regularly, so he bought a marshy land, facing his house in Giverny, crossed by a river. He had the land landscaped, created a water garden, had the lily pond dug. Passionate about gardening, he bought seeds and seedlings on each of his trips. The children of the couple also participated greatly in this passion.

In 1896 and 1897, Monet stopped traveling to devote himself to his garden. The Water Lilies and the Japanese bridge he had erected over his basin, are at the heart of his work. As Alice suffered the pain of losing one of her daughters, Monet spent more time with her and especially took her on his pictorial journeys. This is how she accompanied him to London, where he began the series dedicated to Parliament. While the public remained captivated, critics reproached him for forms too blurred (in the continuity of Turner whom he admired) compared to Cézanne's new paintings, which prefigured the Constructivists and the Cubists.

The Water Lilies were exhibited in New York in 1901 where the success was significant and impacted an entire generation of American painters. Monet enlarged his garden, redesigned it, and each of these structural modifications of the pond in Giverny enriched his painting, as he often put on canvas what he built with his own hands, on his land... Always with Alice, he made two trips to Venice and brought back many paintings, which he generally finished in his studio. This was his last major series, a double cataract was diagnosed in 1912.

In the midst of World War I, he worked on his ultimate project: gigantic decorative panels in the colors of the Water Lilies. In November 1918, he offered two to Clémenceau who had just signed the armistice. The last years of his life were devoted to these panels which were given to France, even before their completion, to create what would be the Monet Museum.

Claude Monet passed away on December 5, 1926.

At his funeral, Clémenceau, a great admirer and friend of the painter, removed the funeral shroud covering the painter's coffin, exclaiming, "No! No black for Monet! Black is not a color!"

Monet is buried in Giverny. It is his son Michel who inherits all his paintings and Giverny, his brother having died a few years earlier. Upon Michel's death with no heir, the paintings returned to the Marmottan Museum, where one can still admire the largest collection of the painter's works today, including some of the panels that occupied his last creative years.

(c) Natacha PELLETIER for PASSION ESTAMPES

Read more