Monet Essay, Research Paper

Vie de Monet

> Oscar Claude Monet ou Claude Monet tait l’inspiration de la movement Impressionism. Il est n le 14 novembre 1840 Paris. Beaucoup des autre artistes c l bre de le movement Impressionism taient n s pendant cette d cade aussi. Son p re, Claude Adolf Monet, tait un picier. Quand Monet a cinq ans, sa famille a d m nag pour Le Harve. Le m re de Monet est morte en 1857. Les relations de Monet et son p re se d t riorerent de plus en plus et Monet a d cid de quitter le lyc e le m me an. Il n’a pas fini ses tudes. Monet a rencontr Boudin en 1858 qui a introduit Monet pour peindre en plein air. Deux ans apr s le mort de sa m re, Monet est entr l’Academie Suisse ou il a rencontr Camille Pissaro. En 1861 il a conscrit Algerie. Monet est tomb malade avec typhoid en 1862, mais il a recouv tr s vite. Monet a rencontre son marie, Camille Doncieux, etre en 1865. Elle a pos pour Le Dejeuner sur l’Herbe. Le premiere fils de Monet, Jean, est n a Paris sans mariage en 1867. Monet a essay de suicide en 1868. Camille et Claude ont epous en 1870, et il s’est refug a Londres lorsque la guerre a escalad . Le prochaine an son p re est mort et Monet a d m nag Argenteuil. Argenteuil a situ pr s de Paris sur la Seine. En 1878 Michel, le deuxieme fils, est n . Camille est morte dans 1879 de tuberculose. Apr s la mort de Camille, Alice Horsched a prend en charge la famille de Claude Monet en plus de ses six enfants. Toute la famille s’est install Poissy en 1881. Neuf ans derniers en date, Monet a achet la maison de Giverny. Pendant les deux ans prochain, M. Hosched a mort et Monet a epous Alice. En 1907 Monet a le premier sympt mes de la cataracte. Alice est morte en 1911 et trois ans prochain Jean est mort. En 1922 Monet n’a pas travaille parce-que son vision tait trop mal, mais l’an prochain il a eu un operation. Sa vue s’est amelieor e. Monet est mort en 1926. Il a souffr d’un cancer du poumon.

Monet’s Art

Monet’s art began with his love for school. He once said, “It [school] seemed like a prison, and I could never bear to stay there, even for four hours a day, especially when the sunshine beckoned and the sea was smooth.” Out of shear boredom Monet drew caricatures of his teachers, who tried hard to get him to concentrate on other subjects rather than solely art. However, there efforts failed them, not only because he was making more profit from one drawing than his teachers made in one day, but he later dropped out of school to become known as the “Father of Impressionalism”. This title did not impress Monet; it was a position he never wanted. What he wanted out of life was to honor the lessons of his master, Boudin.

In 1874 Monet and 29 other artists decided to show their work in their own exhibition due to their exclusion from the Salon. At their first exhibition a journalist commented on Monet’s painting Impression-Sunrise, saying it was only an impression, perhaps not even a completed painting. In spite of the insult, this new group of artists now had a name Impressionists.

Even though Monet painted with vivid colors, he was a morbid individual on the verge of losing his sanity with the creation of every piece of work. Somewhere in between his addiction to nicotine and alcohol, he found time to paint extravagant art. He smoked 40 cigarettes a day and was no stranger to a stiff drink. Monet suffered a tragic loss with the death of his wife Camille. He said, “She was not only my wife but my favorite model.” He captured his sorrow in the painting Camille on her Deathbed.

It was a Giverny when Monet began his world-renowned series. These series include Haystacks, Poplars, Rouen Cathedral, Mornings, the Japanese Bridge, and Waterlilies. Monet’s series showed his preoccupation with what he called “instantaneity”. When the light changed on the object he was painting he would move on to a new canvas. Some of his series exceeded the amount of 30 paintings each. Monet often spent anywhere from two months to numerous years on a series.

Monet was very centered around his art when involved with a series. He not only shredded his works if they did not meet his satisfaction, but he also demanded perfect conditions for his paintings. For instance, in the Poplar series he learned that the trees were to be cut down for lumber though he had not yet finished his work of 24 poplars later to be exhibited. He made a deal with the local lumber merchant, paying him to postpone cutting down the trees until the completion of his project.

Monet’s first series was the Haystack series. He did not paint them because of their noted symbolism of political and religious ideas, but he painted them because they were nearby, and because he liked the shape of the piles. He painted so many incomplete canvases that his servant had trouble carrying enough wheelbarrow loads to satisfy him. Winter came before he was finished, so he paid the farmer who owned the field to keep the haystacks on the field until he was done. This project lasted three years.

The Rouen Cathedral series was painted at age fifty-two. He painted this series from a room with a big window directly across from Notre-Dame Cathedral. It was the first time he was going to attempt to paint an outdoor scene from indoors. When the conditions changed, he would pick up another canvas and begin a new painting. He returned to the previously started paintings a year later, when the atmospheric conditions matched up with that of the particular painting. He was thinking of abandoning his works at the end of his second session, but he decided to take them back to Giverny with him instead. He never went back for the third session; however, he did finish the series by memory.

Monet planted a garden between his house, which was the setting of both his Japanese Bridge series and his Waterlilies series. The Waterlilies series differed from all of his other works in that there was no sky, horizon, or land, only the middle of the pond was portrayed on the canvas. The trees and the sky that he always showed in his other works were now only seen as reflections in the pond, and the sun was only seen as highlights on the lily pads afloat in the water. The paintings were twice as wide as his earlier ones. The Waterlilies project was his last and biggest. The paintings were over 6 feet high and they ranged from 5 to 20 feet in length. Today they line the walls of two large oval rooms in a Paris museum called the Orangerie.

Paul C zanne once said of Monet that he was “only an eye. But God, what an eye!” Monet always had “a horror of theories,” and he believed that we only really know the world through our vision, rather than our intellect.

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