Claude Monet
November 14, 1840 – December 5, 1926
French painter and founder of Impressionism, known for his series of water lilies and haystacks.
Biography
Claude Monet grew up in Le Havre, where the painter Eugène Boudin encouraged him to paint outdoors. In Paris he joined Renoir, Sisley and Bazille in painting landscapes and modern life with quick, broken brushwork.
His painting Impression, Sunrise, shown at the first independent exhibition in 1874, gave the Impressionist movement its name. He spent years in poverty before his work began to sell in the 1880s.
From 1883 he lived at Giverny, where he made series of paintings of haystacks, poplars, Rouen Cathedral and the Thames, studying changes of light. His later years were devoted to his water garden and the large Water Lilies panels now in the Orangerie in Paris. He died in 1926.