Claude Monet [klod mɔnɛ] (b. November 14, 1840 in Paris; † December 5, 1926 in Giverny, born Oscar-Claude Monet) was an important French painter whose middle creative period is assigned to the style of Impressionism.
The early work up to the mid-1860s includes realistic paintings, some of which Monet exhibited at the Paris Salon. In the late 1860s, Claude Monet began to paint Impressionist paintings.
An example of his paintings of this creative period is Impression, Sunrise, a harbor view of Le Havre, which gave the name to the whole movement. Thus he moved away from the taste of the time, influenced by the traditional art academies, which worsened his financial situation.
In the 1870s, Monet participated in some of the Impressionist exhibitions, in which artists such as Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Edgar Degas also took part, and was promoted in particular by the art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel.
Monet's financial situation remained strained until the 1890s. During this time, Monet developed the concept of the series, according to which he painted a motif in different light moods. In addition, he began to lay out his famous garden in Giverny, which he subsequently also used as a motif for his paintings.
Claude Monet's Life
Claude Monet was born on November 14, 1840 at 45 rue Lafitte in Paris. He was the second son of Adolphe Monet and his wife Louise Justine Aubrée. He was baptized as Oscar-Claude Monet in the church of Notre-Dame-de-Lorette, and his parents always called him Oscar.
His father owned a colonial goods store. His economic situation deteriorated around 1845 to the point that the family moved to Le Havre at the mouth of the Seine, where his father's half-sister, Marie-Jeanne Lecadre, lived. Her husband, Jacques Lecadre, was a colonial goods wholesaler and ship's delivery man, and provided Monet's father with work in his trading concern.
Caricature of the notary Léon Marchon, about 1855/1856, Art Institute of Chicago with the signature O. Monet
Monet's family spent winters at their home in Le Havre, and summers at the Lecadres' country home in the northern suburb of Sainte-Adresse. Later, he moved with his family to an adjacent village, but the family did not stay there for long, as Adolphe Monet had to move for professional reasons.
In Le Havre, Claude Monet attended the municipal high school between 1851 and 1857, where he received drawing lessons from Jacques-François Ochard. He rejected school discipline, preferring instead to spend time on the cliffs or by the sea.
In class, Monet made caricatures of students and teachers, which were displayed in the window of the only frame dealer in Le Havre. By the age of 15, Claude Monet was already known throughout the city as a caricaturist. He received commissions for which he could fetch prices of 20 francs. They were all signed O. Monet (See caricature of the notary Marchon).
Claude Monet's Education
In addition to his caricatures, seascapes by the painter Eugène Boudin were exhibited in the shop window of the frame dealer. Claude Monet did not like these paintings and refused oticeto meet Boudin on the frame dealer's mediation.
However, when he did not n Boudin entering the store, the dealer took the opportunity to introduce Boudin to Monet as the draftsman of the caricatures. The painter praised Claude Monet's talent, but also advised him not to be content with drawing and suggested that he paint landscapes.
After the death of his mother on January 28, 1857, Monet's aunt, who was herself an amateur painter and had contacts with Armand Gautier, took care of the young Claude Monet. After Jacques Lecadre's death, Monet's father took over his business and moved his family into his house.
That year Monet produced his first landscape painting and decided to become a painter. His father then applied to the magistrate of Le Havre for a scholarship, which was rejected, as was a second application the following year.
Nevertheless, Monet traveled to Paris to visit the Salon de Paris exhibition. In addition, he made contact with artists such as Constant Troyon and Armand Gautier and worked in the studio of the painter Charles Monginot, who was a friend of Boudin.
During this time Monet received financial support from his father. In addition, Claude Monet had 2000 francs at his disposal, which he earned from his caricatures and which his aunt managed for him. In 1860, the financial support from his father decreased, as he refused to enter the École des Beaux-Arts as his parents had wished.
Monet entered the free painting school Académie Suisse, where he was mainly engaged in figure studies. Monet attended exhibitions of the artists' colony in Barbizon. The painters of the Barbizon school rejected the widespread idealizing landscape compositions, preferring instead landscape paintings in the style of realism. Claude Monet also stayed at the Brasserie des Martyrs, which was a meeting place for many modern artists and writers.
In April 1861, Claude Monet was called up for seven years of military service. There was a possibility to buy himself out of military service for 2500 francs. However, Claude Monet did not have enough money for this, and his family only wanted to provide the sum if Monet would give up painting in return and take over the business in Le Havre.
He decided to take up painting and was assigned to the cavalry in Algeria. Because he fell ill with typhoid fever, he was allowed to return to Le Havre in the summer of 1862. There he met Johan Barthold Jongkind, a native of the Netherlands. Together they worked on landscape studies. In November 1862, Claude Monet was ransomed from military service by his aunt for the even greater sum of 3000 francs to spare him the last six years of service.
She assigned him Auguste Toulmouche, who was a genre painter and husband of Marie-Jeanne Lecadres' cousin, as his artistic tutor. The latter recommended Monet to join Charles Gleyre's studio, where Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley and Frédéric Bazille were also enrolled.
Together with Bazille, Monet traveled to Chailly near Barbizon over Easter in 1863 and painted landscapes there, as he did the following year. He also continued his studies with Gleyre until his studio closed in July 1864.
During the summer, Monet, Bazille, and Jongkind and Boudin, who followed later, painted on the Normandy Channel coast. Monet's family threatened to cut off his financial support as a result of disputes, so he asked Bazille for money for the first time. During his studies, Monet presented himself in a bourgeois manner, for example, he wore shirts with lace cuffs despite his difficult financial situation, and was called a dandy by his fellow students.
Claude Monet's Salon exhibitions
In 1864, a still life of flowers by Claude Monet was exhibited at the Rouen Municipal Art Exhibition. In addition, Monet was commissioned by Louis-Joseph-François Gaudibert to paint two portraits. This commission had a special significance for him because Gaudibert's son also later commissioned portraits and also gave him financial donations as support.
At the end of 1864 or beginning of 1865, Claude Monet and Frédéric Bazille founded a joint studio in Paris. Monet was allowed to show two seascapes at the Paris Salon of 1865. These two paintings met with positive criticism, which prompted Claude Monet to plan a monumental Breakfast in the Green for the Salon exhibition of 1866, but he was unable to complete it.
Camille in a green dress, 1866, Kunsthalle Bremen
While working on this work, he was posed by Camille Doncieux, with whom Monet formed a relationship. Monet planned the picture in reference to the Breakfast in the Green by Édouard Manet, which caused a scandal by depicting nudity without a mythological background, but Monet wanted to keep his picture rather conservative and thus in line with mass taste.
Monet admired the works of Manet, with whom he had been in closer contact since 1866. When he could not complete the planned painting for the Salon, he painted Camille in a Green Dress within four days, which was positively received at the Salon.
Due to his financial difficulties, Claude Monet feigned a break with Camille and thus drew closer again to his family, from whom he hoped for financial support. Thus he spent the summer of 1867 with his parents in Sainte-Adresse, while the pregnant Camille continued to live in Paris and was cared for by Bazille. On August 8, 1867, she gave birth to Monet's first son, Jean.
Not wanting to abandon his mistress and son, Monet returned to Paris. In the same year, with the painting Women in the Garden, another of Monet's works was rejected by the Salon de Paris. To support his friend financially, Bazille bought this work on installments and took him back into his studio.
Claude Monet's financial situation remained difficult, so in 1868 he stayed in Étretat and Fécamp, where he again received commissions from the shipowner Gaudibert. In addition, the latter redeemed seized paintings by Monet. At the end of the year Monet again fled from his creditors to Paris. In 1870 a painting submitted by Monet to the Salon de Paris was again rejected by the jury.
On June 26 of that year, Claude Monet married longtime lover Camille Doncieux. Through his choice of subject matter and painting style, Monet moved further and further away from the Salon de Paris and thus from commercial success.
With the start of the Franco-Prussian War in July 1870, Claude Monet left France and moved to London to avoid being drafted into the army, while his friends Bazille and Manet went off to war. On November 28, 1870, Bazille died at the front. While in London, Claude Monet met the art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel.
He learned to appreciate the works of the English landscape painter William Turner, in whose paintings the contours dissolve in the light. On January 17, 1871, Monet's father died and he received a small inheritance. After the end of the war, Monet returned to France in the fall of 1871 after a detour via Holland.
There he rented a house with a garden in Argenteuil. With the money from the inheritance and Camille's dowry, the family was able to live in middle-class prosperity for the first time. In 1872 Durand-Ruel bought several paintings by Monet. The latter set up a boat as his studio and painted on it on the banks of the Seine.
Impressionist exhibitions
In 1873, Claude Monet met Gustave Caillebotte in Argenteuil, with whom he decided to organize joint exhibitions. In December, the "Société Anonyme Coopérative d' Artistes-Peintres, -Sculpteurs, -Graveurs, etc." was founded for this purpose. This society was also joined by the artists who were later considered the core of the Impressionists.
The first group exhibition took place in 1874 in the studio of the photographer Nadar on the Boulevard des Capucines in Paris. Based on the title of the exhibited work Impression - Sunrise, which Monet had painted in 1872 in Le Havre together with other pictures, this exhibition was derogatorily called "The Exhibition of the Impressionists" by the critic Louis Leroy in the magazine Le Charivari.
Thus the term Impressionism, first used derisively by critics and subsequently by the artists themselves, was established by this painting by Monet. The exhibition remained largely unnoticed and the society was dissolved at the end of 1874. It was not until 1876 that the second Impressionist exhibition took place. On this occasion, Claude Monet exhibited 18 works in the premises of the art dealer Durand-Ruel.
That year Monet also met Ernest Hoschedé, a department store owner, who commissioned him to paint panels for a room in his Rottembourg chateau in Montgeron. On March 17, 1878, Monet's second son Michel Monet was born. That summer the family moved to Vétheuil.
They were followed by Alice Hoschedé and her six children after her husband had to declare bankruptcy. On September 5, 1879, Monet's first wife Camille died at the age of 32 as a result of a failed abortion.
In 1881 Durand-Ruel bought more of Monet's paintings and also financially supported his 1882 painting trips to the Norman coast. In December 1881, Claude Monet and Alice Hoschedé moved to Poissy together with their children. The Impressionist exhibition of 1882 was the last in which Claude Monet participated before the series of exhibitions ended four years later with the eighth exhibition.
At this point, his departure from the other Impressionists became increasingly clear, who accused him of no longer supporting the group out of selfish motives. Monet made an effort to exhibit again at the Salon de Paris and one of his paintings was now accepted by the jury.
Claude Monet's Giverny
In 1883 Durand-Ruel organized a solo exhibition of Monet's paintings. This exhibition met with positive criticism, but it did not result in major sales. Nevertheless, Monet's economic situation improved after the market for Impressionist works revived in the early 1880s.
Monet in his garden. In the background you can see the Japanese bridge.
Claude Monet rented the house in Giverny, in the vicinity of which he laid out his famous garden in the following years, and moved in there with his two sons, as well as Alice Hoschedé and her children.
In December 1883, he traveled with Renoir to the French Mediterranean coast, and from January to April 1884 Monet painted on the Riviera. Two years later, another trip to Holland followed. In the fall of 1886, Monet painted in Brittany, where he met his future biographer Gustave Geffroy. From January to April 1888, Monet painted on the Côte d'Azur and traveled again to London in the summer of that year.
Upon his return to France, he declined the Cross of the Legion of Honor. The following year, Claude Monet raised money to buy the painting Olympia from the widow of his friend Manet and donate it to the Louvre.
Garden path to the house
In 1890, Monet purchased the house in Giverny, which he had already occupied for seven years, having been in a better financial situation since the mid-1880s through regular sales. Through further purchases of land, Claude Monet continued to expand his property and invested a lot of money in the creation of his garden.
In the process, however, he encountered the distrust of the local farmers, who feared dangers to their land and livestock from the exotic plants such as tuberoses from Mexico. In the late 1880s, a small group of American painters found themselves in Giverny to learn from Claude Monet.
Among them was Theodore Robinson, who was one of the first American artists to incorporate Impressionism into his art. Monet did not maintain close contact with the so-called "Givernists" because he never wanted to take on the role of teacher.
Monet also took a stand on the Dreyfus affair. On January 15, 1898, Le Temps published a petition, which Monet had also signed, calling for a review of the wrongful conviction of Alfred Dreyfus. This petition was carried by Émile Zola and many well-known personalities from various fields.
In 1891 Ernest Hoschedé died. Claude Monet and his widow legitimized their relationship by marriage in July 1892. That same year, Monet's stepdaughter Suzanne married the painter Theodore Butler, who belonged to the Givernists. Monet traveled to Norway in 1895 and also visited his stepson there.
Monet at the lily pond
In Giverny, Claude Monet built a second studio in 1897, as he needed more space for his works. At the Biennale di Venezia, 20 of Monet's works were exhibited. In the summer of that year, Monet's son Jean married his stepsister, Blanche Hoschedé.
In 1899 and 1900 Claude Monet made several trips to London. Together with Alice, Monet traveled by car to Madrid in 1904, where he studied the Spanish masters such as Velázquez and El Greco. In Giverny, meanwhile, he worked mainly on the water lily paintings, but was not satisfied. For this reason, he postponed an exhibition planned at Durand-Ruel several times in 1906.
Last years of life and death of Claude Monet
In 1908 the first signs of Monet's eye disease appeared. From October to December of that year, together with his wife, he set out on his last trip to Venice. There he not only painted, but studied works by artists such as Titian and Paolo Veronese in churches and museums.
On May 19, 1911, Monet's second wife Alice also died. The following year, his eyesight continued to deteriorate, and he was diagnosed with double-sided cataracts. In 1912, 29 of Monet's 37 Venice paintings were exhibited with great success at the Bernheim-Jeune Gallery.
Georges Clemenceau and other friends of Monet suggested to the latter in 1914 to donate paintings of the Water Lilies series to the French state. But Monet, who had earlier refused honorary donations from the state, could not be persuaded to make the donation.
After the death of his son Jean Monet, his widow took over the management of the household in Giverny. There Monet had a third, larger studio built in 1915, where he painted the water lily decorations. At the end of World War I with the armistice on November 11, 1918, Monet donated eight of his water lily paintings to the French state. In 1921, depressed by failing eyesight, he considered withdrawing the donation.
Monet family burial place in Giverny
That same year, a major retrospective of Monet's works was held at Durand-Ruel. It was not until 1922, at the urging of his friend Clemenceau, that Claude Monet signed a notarized contract for the donation, which thus became legally valid and the paintings actually became the property of the state.
Monet regained his sight in 1923 through two operations. He began to paint again on his large water lily decorations, but was hampered by depression. Monet destroyed many of his paintings from the last years himself, because he did not want unfinished works, as well as sketches and attempts, to enter the art trade after his death, as had been the case after Manet's death. On December 5, 1926 Claude Monet died in Giverny.
Claude Monet's Work
The early work
Monet painted The Breakfast in the Green in 1865 and 1866 to submit to the Salon de Paris. The painting originally had an overall size of 4.20 m × 6.50 m. Monet gave it to his landlord as a pledge because of his debts and redeemed it after a few years.
However, it showed great moisture damage and was partially moldy. He restored the painting, but was only able to restore two sections. Claude Monet used Manet's Breakfast in the Green from 1863 as a model for this work. Manet's painting showed a naked woman between two urban-clad men having a picnic in a forest clearing and caused a scandal with the non-mythically linked nudity.
Claude Monet was inspired by this work of Manet and oriented himself on it. In contrast to Manet's painting, his Breakfast in the Green was not to be created alone in the studio, but in the open air. Another difference was the renunciation of provocation, Monet wanted to adapt to the taste of the crowd, because he still sought recognition in the Salon de Paris.
For the figures in the painting, Monet's mistress Camille and his friend Bazille sat and possibly stood as models in the forest of Fontainebleau, which he recorded in a preliminary study.
He transferred this to the large format in the studio in Paris from about October 1865, but had to realize shortly before the start of the Salon de Paris that the picture would not be finished in time.
In its original form, Claude Monet's painting showed twelve people dressed in the Parisian fashion of the time at a picnic in a birch forest. The main focus is on the figures depicted, whose behavior Monet reproduced individually.
They are grouped around the white picnic blanket on which the food is presented. Claude Monet created in the picture an intimate natural space, where the people are far from urban conventions. This mood is created mainly by the play of light and shadow in the painting.
In 1866 Claude Monet painted another figure painting, Women in the Garden, which shows several people. In contrast to Breakfast in the Green, Monet did without preliminary studies and their transfer in the studio for this painting. Thus he began the 2.55 m × 2.05 m painting directly outdoors, but had to finish it in the studio in Honfleur because he had fled from his creditors.
In order to be able to paint the upper sections of the painting, Monet developed a device that allowed him to lower the painting into an excavated hole in the ground. The colors used are lighter overall than in Monet's earlier works, since he mostly mixed them with white.
In addition, modeled transitions are increasingly replaced by a rhythmic division into short or broad brushstrokes, as well as dabs. For the women in the picture, except for the woman at the right edge of the picture, Camille again stood and sat as a model.
The position of the women formed a triangular composition, slightly shifted to the left. In this painting, however, the figures do not appear to be integrated into nature. No reason for the gathering of the women picking flowers is apparent from the painting, and Monet does not depict their character.
The picture is fascinating mainly because of the light-shadow contrasts, especially the one running over the dress of the seated woman, which make it lively. Likewise, the light filtered through the parasol in combination with the light reflected from the dress creates a rosy glow on the woman's face.
Painted in 1867, The Terrace of Sainte-Adresse measures 98 × 130 centimeters and indicates the change in Monet's painting style. It shows a terrace right on the shore of the sea, from which the figures can watch a regatta. The seated man in the foreground is Claude Monet's father.
The painting appears schematic because Monet's brushwork does not have the same ease as in his Parisian works or those done later. However, it goes beyond his previous works in its depiction of light because he painted the shadows in color for the first time. Also, the flowers in Monet's garden were painted with more brilliant colors than was the norm in Realism.
He used pure red, which was particularly radiant due to white light and the contrast with the complementary color green. However, Claude Monet did not depict their natural form, but depicted their flowers with dabs of color alone.
This picture can no longer be clearly assigned to one of Monet's stylistic periods, but due to its schematic effect it is even closer to the early realistic work than to the Impressionist works. In addition, Monet found the theme of the garden in this painting and in the painting Flowering Garden in Sainte-Adresse, which he painted in the same year, and which he subsequently took up again and again.
Turning to Impressionism
In the paintings of the Impressionists, visible reality loses its physicality and material quality and becomes a mere appearance 'impression'. It is no longer what is perceived, but the process of perception that is depicted. Several design principles are used:
The use of pure spectral colors
The use of complementary contrast
The covering instead of glazing application of color in short brushstrokes, each of which forms a color unit (comma technique).
The use of cool and warm colors in both the foreground and background of the painting abandons the naturalistic air and color perspective (dark and sharp in the foreground, and light and blurred in the background,
as well as warm tones in the foreground and cool in the background), as for example in the painting Woman with Parasol, 1886. This painting technique finds its purest and most accomplished form in Monet's late work from 1890 onward.
The painting The River/Amidst the Banks of the Seine near Bennecourt, painted by Claude Monet in 1868, is considered one of his earliest Impressionist works. In the foreground, a woman sits under trees on the bank of the Seine, where a boat is moored.
On the opposite bank is a village reflected in the river water along with the surrounding landscape. The picture is painted with a light brush stroke, which is evident, for example, from the yellow dots in the greenery in the foreground. The composition of the picture is diagonal.
The left, upper half of the picture is dominated by the trees and their foliage, which form a screen for the background. The lower right offers a view into the distance. The foreground of the picture is in shadow, while the other bank is in sunlight.
The reflection on the water surface blurs the spatial references in the picture in the two-dimensionality. In addition, the picture is given a special rhythm by the areas of color, which hardly differ from each other despite the different objects depicted. Thus, for Monet, water is a means of abstraction and a step towards abstract painting.
One of the most important paintings of Impressionism is Monet's Impression, Sunrise from 1872, which gave the art style its name. The painting is a seascape and shows the port of Le Havre in the morning. In the background are ships at anchor, disappearing into the fog.
In the foreground of the picture three smaller boats can be seen dimly. The light of the rising sun is reflected on the water. Claude Monet painted most of the picture with light brushstrokes and colors such as blue and purple, the reflection of the sun on the water he painted with a few bold orange strokes.
The ships in the background serve as a structuring element of the painting, their masts and outlines creating linear structures despite the fog. The picture is painted flat, so that the impression of spatial distance becomes clear only because of the diagonally arranged small boats. Because of the sketchiness, the work came under heavy criticism.
For example, art critic Louis Leroy wrote, "A wallpaper in its original state is more elaborate than this lake piece." Moreover, referring to this painting, Leroy called the first group exhibition of the "Sociéte Anonyme Coopérative d'Artistes-Peintres, -Sculpteurs, -Graveurs, etc." the "Exhibition of Impressionists," which gave the name to the entire style.
In 1879, Claude Monet painted Camille Monet on her deathbed after his wife died as a result of a botched abortion. The painting shows the just-deceased Camille with a bouquet of flowers placed on her chest, with her pale face in particular. The facial features are only dimly discernible.
The face is detached from the room and seems to sink into the pillows of the bed. From the side, the first sunlight of the morning falls on the bed. Nevertheless, the painting remains cool in effect because of the colors chosen. Monet's brushstroke is disorderly, powerful, but also delicate, especially in the face area, which is a sign of Monet's state of mind at this time.
One impulse for Monet to paint this picture was the varying shading and tinting on the face of the dead woman. In particular, the succession of purple tones during rigor mortis held a special fascination for Monet. In the contrast between the light of morning and the coolness of death lies the mood of the moment that Monet captured in the painting.
Monet and modernity
Claude Monet dealt with modernity several times in his early works. Thus, he painted several pictures with reference to the railroad, in which the fascination of modern technology became clear. In the railroad Monet found industrial development, progress and speed symbolically united.
This is already shown in the painting The Railway Bridge of Argenteuil from 1873, which represented a monument of the new age. This symbolism of the railroad is particularly well seen in the paintings of the Saint-Lazare station, which Monet painted in 1877.
According to Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Monet received permission to paint in the station from the director of the Western Railway Line after he declared, finely dressed, that he was a painter and, after much deliberation, decided to choose its station as his subject.
He made such an impression that trains were stopped for him, fired with extra coal to create enough steam, and platforms were closed. Monet painted several studies from different corners of the station.
The composition of the paintings is strongly influenced by the linear structures of engineering. The incident sunlight combined with the smoke and steam of the railroads made these structures particularly effective. In the mood thus evoked, the train station appears as a "cathedral of the technical age."
Claude Monet picked up on Japonism as early as 1875. Japan had only opened up to the West in the middle of the 19th century. Japanese art and culture now became known to a wider audience in Europe.
Japonism became a fashion, especially in the western metropolises. Since his trip to Holland in 1871, Claude Monet collected Japanese woodblock prints, which often served him as models for pictorial compositions. For example, the painting The Charcoal Bearers has a main motif displaced from the center of the picture and a grid-like structure of the motif.
The motif extends in a regular sequence far into the background of the picture. The painting with the strongest reference to Japan painted by Monet is La Japonaise (Camille in Japanese Costume).
It shows Camille in a Japanese robe decorated with plastic embroidery. She turns her face to the viewer of the painting and looks him in the eyes. She is fanning herself with a fan.
This is taken up again in the background of the picture, which shows twelve fans arranged irregularly on a wall. The picture is bright and colorful, but its closedness corresponds to the conventions of the time. Without furnishings, the room lacks the atmosphere typical of Monet.
In addition, there are further concessions to the audience with the colors of the Tricolore picked up in the fan in Camille's hand. Camille's blonde wig is also a break from the Japanese style. Because of the painting's adaptation to the public's taste, it was able to sell at the second Impressionist exhibition for the relatively high price of 2000 francs. Monet himself later rejected this painting. To this he said, "it was trash, for it was nothing more than a whim."
The Cornstalk, Poplar and Cathedral series
Early on, Claude Monet began to capture a motif in different light situations and moods. For example, he painted a view of Vétheuil twice from the same vantage point, once foggy and once sunny.
On several trips to the Norman coast in 1882, Monet painted several pictures titled Customs Guard's Hut in Varengeville. He chose different angles and painted at different times of day. The paintings of the customs guard's hut clearly show Monet's development towards series.
In 1886 he created the two variants of a woman with a parasol, which captured the light and movement of a moment from different directions and neglected the face of the person depicted. In the series of Grain Ricks (1890), Poplars (1891), and Rouen Cathedral (1892/94), Monet investigated light and its effects, with the actual subject of the painting largely receding into the background.
In 1890 Claude Monet began the series of paintings, which has covered with hay grain ricks to the motive. The ricks caught his eye during a walk across neighboring fields and he immediately began to paint them. He captured many different lighting conditions and reworked the paintings in his studio.
The motif of the grain rick is very simple and was varied by Monet only slightly by changing the distance to the object or adding another. Nevertheless, the compact rick is always at the center of the picture, but it appears differently in each painting due to changing light and environmental conditions.
Thus, the grain rick pictures that Monet painted in winter, with the blue colors used, appear quite cool in contrast to the picture that shows a rick at sunset and is dominated by the color red. At the same time, the impression of nature remained the starting point of the painting. However, it was supplemented and further elaborated by Monet's imagination.
In addition to the grain rick series, Monet painted 23 pictures at the same time, which show an avenue of poplars on the right bank of the Epte near Limetz. This motif was easy for Claude Monet to reach in his studio boat.
Shortly after he found this motif, the trees were up for auction. He asked the municipality for a postponement, but they refused. He reimbursed the buyer, a timber merchant, for the difference between the auction sum and his asking price, thus achieving a delay.
He also showed the motif of the poplars in the different light conditions of different times of the day and year. In contrast to the Schober paintings, Claude Monet used a different composition for the Poplar series.
The ricks are a compact element that is centrally located in the picture. Instead, the poplars and their reflections in the water structure the paintings vertically and, with the horizontal bank, show Monet's desire for linear composition in these paintings.
When painting this series, Monet often used the complementary color pairs of blue-violet and yellow-orange, which he applied in small dabs. Overall, Claude Monet worked more and more with color harmonies that he fine-tuned. In 1892, Durand-Ruel presented 15 of the works.
It was the first time that a series of paintings was exhibited without other works. Like the Grain Ricks paintings, the Poplar Alley paintings met with positive criticism.
Claude Monet achieved his final breakthrough with his series of paintings Cathedral of Rouen, created between 1892 and 1894. In the early spring of 1892 and 1893, Monet painted the west façade of the cathedral from five only slightly different positions.
In the process, the facade occupies nearly the entire canvas in 30 paintings, while three paintings show smaller sections. The extreme closeness to the motif and the limited detail of the picture were an innovation in Monet's time. There is no distance between the painter and the object.
However, Monet did not depict architecture per se, but its effect in different lighting conditions. These differences in light are evident in the different colors and color harmonies of the paintings.
In 1894, Monet reworked the paintings in this series in his studio, simultaneously editing the works depicting different moods and submitting none before the complete series was finished. The paintings in the Rouen Cathedral series confirmed Monet's artistic breakthrough.
Travel pictures
Claude Monet made several trips during his life to the French Channel coast, the French Mediterranean coast, Norway, London and Venice. Especially the invention of the railroad and the train connections connected with it made faster and cheaper travel possible, so that Monet could afford to travel several times within France. He was always on the road with his painting utensils and painted in the places he visited.
In December 1883, Monet made a trip to the south of France with Renoir. In early 1884, Monet returned alone to the Mediterranean near Bordighera. On this trip, for example, was created the picture Bordighera, which has the typical style of these paintings.
In the foreground of the picture are arabesque-like twisted trees. In the background, which is lower towards the sea, the village can be seen. Monet uses colors like pink, orange, ultramarine and turquoise blue, which he had hardly used before.
Thus, in this painting, the brilliant blue of the sea is particularly striking. Monet said of depicting these colors, "you needed diamonds and gems on your palette." In all, Monet brought back from his Mediterranean sojourn about 50 paintings, most of which he completed only in his studio.
Claude Monet traveled several times to London, where he had already stayed in 1870/1871. During his painting trips to the British capital from 1899 to 1901, Monet began a series of paintings of the Parliament of London, Charing Cross Bridge and Waterloo Bridge from the Savoy Hotel and St. Thomas Hospitals.
With a total of over 100 London paintings, this is Monet's most extensive series after the Water Lilies paintings. He painted on several canvases at the same time to capture the different and changing light moods.
He usually only sketched and painted beginnings, which were then further elaborated in the studio. It is astonishing that Claude Monet after 20 years again painted motifs from the big city. The picture from the series The Parliament of London from 1904 shows the building in a depressed atmosphere.
Dark shades dominate and the outlines of the building stand out sharply. This contrasts with the orange-red sun, whose light is reflected on the Thames. Again, as in the series of paintings of Rouen Cathedral, Monet does not paint the neo-Gothic architecture of the building, but solely its effect in the light. Since Monet usually painted the Parliament building against the light, this painting probably shows dusk.
In the process, the lighting conditions changed very quickly. Critics reacted very positively to the London pictures and they could be sold at high prices.
The 37 paintings that Claude Monet created in 1908 during his stay in Venice, which lasted only two months, reach a level of abstraction in the color tapestries that no longer corresponds to the instantaneous painting of Impressionism. He studied the atmosphere of the city and at first considered it impossible to depict, but then began to paint enthusiastically.
For example, he created Evening Mood in Venice, which shows the church of San Giorgio Maggiore in the light of the setting sun. The church tower and the light of the sun are reflected in the water.
Monet's brushwork vividly suggests the undulation of the water. At the upper edge of the picture the color blue dominates, while in the direction of the horizon more and more yellow and red tones emerge and dominate.
These colors of Venice paintings, as in this one, shine strongly, but are not the image of the original motif. Several times the Doge's Palace and the Palazzo Dario in Venice are his motif. Monet always painted the palazzo from the same perspective, but in different lighting conditions.
Claude Monet began many paintings in Venice and sometimes revised them for years still in the studio. In part, he starts the paintings over again from scratch. Thus the memory of the motif and the sensation play a greater role than the original motif. His works from Venice were again praised by the critics. For example, the paintings were described as "colorful iridescent vacations."
Water Lily Paintings and the Garden of Giverny
Monet spent the last thirty years of his life and creative work mainly on the creation and design of his garden in Giverny, which is divided into the ornamental garden called clos normand and the so-called jardin d'eau or water garden with its water lily pond.
Both often served as motifs for his paintings. He bought exotic plants, some of which had only been known in France for a few years, and composed the color interplay of the flowers.
The painting Path in the Garden of the artist, created in 1901 and 1902, is part of a series of approximately square pictures of the same motif. It shows a path leading to the house through the garden.
The house in the background is in the center of the visual axis, but is only faintly visible due to the abundance of plants. The path is overgrown with climbing roses, which earned it the name "Rose Path", and bordered by borders.
The violet color of the flowers is particularly dominant from these borders, while the upper half of the picture is dominated by the color red. On the path darkly stand out the shadows cast by the climbing roses. The picture is symmetrical in structure, but does not appear strict because of the abundance of color.
Monet employed a gardener solely to care for the water lilies in the water garden. In addition to the water lilies, the pond is enlivened by sea grass and algae, while reeds, irises and weeping willows grow on the shore.
Claude Monet abandoned large landscape compositions and focused on partial views. He concentrated on sections of the water surface. The water landscapes depicted no longer have a horizon, so the sky no longer appears at the top of the picture.
Only as a reflection the sky appears in the picture, as well as trees. Therefore, the pictures can hardly be counted as landscape paintings. Thus Monet used the term "reflection landscapes". He painted the landscapes not only outdoors, but also in the studio, but always returned to the original motif.
The pictures of the water lily pond show the most advanced dissolution of the motif. The broadly lying islands of leaves of the water lilies form horizontal structures, while the reflections in the water create vertical structures. The fact that these geometric structures do not appear boring is mainly due to the loosening effect of the blossoms.
The color also contributes to the loosening up. It is split into many individual nuances, so that within a picture changing color tones are present. Claude Monet reproduced the perception of light in such a way that the flickering mosaic of colors is evident in the picture.
Monet applied the paint in dabs and strokes, with the first layer of paint being very thin and covered by the later, thicker layers. Over time, Monet's application of paint changed.
While the first paintings were painted with short dots and spots, the strokes on the later water lily paintings became thicker and formed swirl-like structures. In addition, the colors of the painting moved away from the actual object color. Furthermore, the formats became larger and larger. For example, the water lily decorations grew considerably with sizes of 2 × 6 meters from 1926 compared to a painting from 1904 with 90 × 92 centimeters.
In addition to the water lily paintings, Monet painted several paintings entitled The Japanese Bridge in his water garden. Claude Monet had the bridge built on the Japanese model.
Mainly because of it, the water garden received the nickname "Japanese Garden". Monet painted this motif as early as 1895 and 1897. It was not until 1899/1900 that it became a coherent series.
The paintings show the bridge from a frontal view from the west side of the pond. The water surface is covered by water lilies and spanned by the bridge. The railing of the bridge alone shows linear structures in the image. In the background of the picture is the lush riparian vegetation.
On the water they are reflected together with the bridge. The water surface and the surroundings of the pond merge with each other due to the homogeneous brushstroke.
Also in this series, the sky is at least not visible directly, but only through reflections and light reflexes, because flora and water occupy the entire surface of the picture.
The first paintings in the series contain a strict symmetry that was abolished in the later paintings, as Monet used stronger color contrasts and included the left bank more. After 1908, the motif of the bridge did not appear in Monet's paintings for a long time. It was not until 1920 that he painted more pictures in this series, but they are radically different from the earlier ones.
They are a single large mass of color, from which the bridge emerges alone with two dark arches hinted at.
Significance
Artistic significance, attention and fame
Claude Monet's work encompasses the influences of several stylistic periods. His early work belongs to Realism, from which he progressively moved away. He was a significant member of the Impressionist group and some of his works are considered among the most important paintings of this style period.
His late work consists mainly of series and garden paintings. Especially this late work of Monet met with little response in the period after his death.
The Water Lily Decorations, which Claude Monet had donated to the French state, were presented to the public on May 17, 1929 in the Paris Orangerie as the "Musée Monet," but the public showed little interest. In 1931, a retrospective of Monet's work was shown in these premises, in which the late work was also clearly underrepresented.
Subsequently, the museum held several other exhibitions in these rooms, which contradicted the contract signed with Claude Monet. During a presentation of Flemish carpets in 1935, the paintings were even hung over with them.
Critics viewed the works negatively because of their dissolving form and particularly intense colors, as they lacked empirical reference to nature.
The paintings thus contradicted the notion that in Impressionism the model of nature is reproduced with optical accuracy. Until the 1980s, art scholars distinguished, with few exceptions, between the Impressionist early work, which encompasses the paintings created between 1870 and 1880, and the negatively judged late work.
At the beginning of the 1880s, the world appeared increasingly threatening, which promoted the imaginary and visionary as a counter-position. Claude Monet was considered a pioneer by contemporary critics between 1880 and the turn of the century. He moved between naturalism and abstraction in his paintings after 1890, which prevents his late paintings from being assigned to one style.
Artists such as Max Liebermann, Augusto Giacometti and Lovis Corinth paid tribute to Monet's Impressionist works and were influenced by them. This influence of Monet, even beyond his death, expired with the death of Pierre Bonnard in 1947, who called himself the "last Impressionist." While the Cubists rejected Monet's works because of the dissolution of static forms, foreign painters in particular, such as Wassily Kandinsky, recognized the importance of Claude Monet to modernism.
The late 1940s and 1950s saw a Monet revival. In 1947, Marc Chagall said of Claude Monet, "Today Monet is for me the Michelangelo of our epoch." In his appreciation, however, the late works did not occupy a special position.
On the contrary, in 1952 André Masson called the Water Lily Decorations the "Sistine Chapel of Impressionism." In addition, a large part of the growing popularity was due to postwar painting in the United States, in which gesture became more prominent and anti-rationalism prevailed.
Interest in late work resurfaced, especially with abstract painting. Over 300 American artists traveled to Paris in the 1950s, where they also studied Monet. In addition to these developments, the first major solo exhibitions in the 1950s also contributed to the international recognition of Claude Monet's work.
In this context, the Impressionist exhibition at the Kunsthalle Basel in 1949 has a special place, since, mainly due to practical constraints, most of the works exhibited belonged to the group of water lily paintings. As a result, the number of visitors to the Orangerie also increased.
Commercial success
For a long time of his artistic work, Claude Monet lived at subsistence level. His works, like those of other painters who did not cultivate the classical style of painting popular with the public, were mostly shunned by buyers. With the economic upswing after the Franco-Prussian War in 1871, the prices of paintings increased and works by the Impressionists also found sales, sometimes at unexpectedly high prices.
The art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel, whom Monet had met during his stay in London, bought works by Monet and other critically rejected artists for years. He did not pay much, but the regular income allowed Monet to lead a financially secure life. In 1873, Durand-Ruel had to cut back on support for the Impressionists because, as a result of an economic crisis in France, the art market also dropped.
The drop in prices was particularly great for works by the Impressionists. In 1874, for example, Ernest Hoschedé had purchased the painting Impression - Sunrise for 800 francs at the first Impressionist exhibition. In 1877, at the forced auction following his bankruptcy, this work fetched only 200 francs.
This auction in particular publicly documented the decline in the price of paintings by Impressionist artists. Monet's situation subsequently deteriorated again.
At the end of 1878, Monet commented, "I'm no longer a beginner, and it's terrible to be in such a position at my age, always having to beg and pester buyers."
Monet's situation did not improve again until after the move to Giverny, when Durand-Ruel was able to resume his full support of the Impressionists. Monet's works became more widely recognized and the prices for his paintings rose.
For example, he was able to achieve prices of 15,000 francs for the paintings in the Rouen Cathedral series in the mid-1890s. At his home in Giverny, major art collectors such as Matsukata Kōjirō visited him.
In the late 1980s, Impressionist works achieved auction results that the majority do not achieve today. Monet is an exception to this. One of the water lily paintings from 1907, for example, achieved a price of $10.5 million in 1989 and was sold again at Christie's in November 2005 for a profit of two million dollars. This is also due to the fact that only a few of Monet's works come on the market. In 2004 there were 26, in 2005 22 and in 2006 28 paintings.
By contrast, by the middle of 2007, there had already been 27. In June 2007, a painting from the Water Lily series from 1904, which had been estimated at 10 to 15 million pounds, was auctioned at Sotheby's for 18.5 million pounds. The buyer was an Asian collector.
It is thus Monet's fourth most expensive work after the Argenteuil Railroad Bridge, which changed hands for $41.4 million at Christie's auction house in May 2008, and a water lily painting from 1900, which sold at Sotheby's in 1998 for 19.8 million pounds. In 2008, the water lily painting Le Bassin aux nympheas fetched 51.7 million euros at Christie's.
For a painting from the "Haystack" series, Christie's New York reported a sale price of $80.45 million on November 16, 2016. On May 14, 2019, another painting from this series even fetched a record price of $110.7 million at the same auction house, after the painting had initially been estimated at 55 million euros. At the opening of the exhibition "Monet.Orte" in Potsdam in February 2020, the Hasso Plattner Foundation, founded by Hasso Plattner, announced itself as the buyer of the work.
Reception
Claude Monet's works are often used in everyday culture as calendar and postcard motifs. In addition, Claude Monet and his works were the subject of paintings by some of the other Impressionists. And his work also had an impact in literature.
Literature
The French writer Marcel Proust was inspired by Claude Monet in his work. He had an affinity for Impressionism in general and admired Monet's works in particular. Although the latter is not often mentioned in Proust's works, there are thematic parallels.
For example, in his novel A la recherche du temps perdu, Marcel Proust described phenomena that Monet captured on canvas. The narrator in this book verbally relays his impressions of the clouds and the sea in the fictional seaside resort of Balbec.
In the novel fragments Jean Santeuil Claude Monet is mentioned several times by name, in that a collector from Rouen buys paintings of Monet. Likewise, in the fragments, the narrator describes the impression of five paintings by Monet that they made on him.
Monet is also mentioned once in the novel Sodom and Gomorrah, along with the exclamation "Oh, these cathedrals!". Reiner Jesse published the two-part novel Light and Shadow about Monet's life with the publishing house AtheneMedia.
Painting
Claude Monet was depicted in several paintings by his artist friends of the Impressionist group. Pierre-Auguste Renoir, for example, portrayed Monet three times. The first painting shows Monet seated, smoking a pipe, reading the newspaper and dates from 1872.
Pierre-Auguste Renoir: Claude Monet reading a newspaper, 1872
The second painting, from 1873, shows Monet painting in his garden, with his entire body in the lower right corner of the painting. The third painting, from 1875, shows Monet standing while painting with a palette and brush in his hands.
Pierre-Auguste Renoir: Monet painting in his garden in Argenteuil, 1873
Only his upper body is shown. Also Édouard Manet thematized Claude Monet on a picture. This shows Monet together with his wife Camille in the studio boat, which he used for painting on the water.
Pierre-Auguste Renoir: Portrait of painter Claude Monet, 1875
Monet's influence can also be seen in many modern artists. Jackson Pollock's dense color textures, for example, resemble those of Monet's late works. The silkscreen series Flowers by Pop artist Andy Warhol is also inspired by Claude Monet's water lily paintings.
Édouard Manet: Claude Monet and his wife in the studio boat, 1874
Warhol had previously seen Monet's oil paintings at the Museum of Modern Art. The oil painting Show me the Monet by Banksy from 2005 takes up the motif and style of Monet's Japanese bridge, but there are two shopping carts stuck in the pond and a red-orange safety cone floating.
Bridge over the Seine near Argenteuil, 1874, Neue Pinakothek in Munich
Film
The black-and-white film Ceux de chez nous, a documentary from 1915, also focuses on Claude Monet. Director Sacha Guitry looked at French culture during the First World War. He focused primarily on Renoir, but also looked at Degas and Monet, who was filmed painting his water lily pictures.
The sky in Monet's painting The Seine at Argenteuil (1873) gave its name to the 2001 film Vanilla Sky, in which the main character, from the film's turning point onward, lives in a make-believe world created from his thoughts, which differs from reality in that its sky is the same color as the sky in some of Monet's works.
Astronomy
The asteroid (6676) Monet was named after Claude Monet on April 4, 1996. Already in 1979 an impact crater on the northern hemisphere of the planet Mercury had been named after Claude Monet: Mercury crater Monet.