Claude Monet: artist research

Claude Monet was a man that was born in 1840 in Paris, France. His life ended in 1926. His father’s name was Claude Adolphe Monet, and his mother’s name was Louise Justine Aubree Monet. Adolphe worked in the family shipping business, and Louise was a hostess/ singer/ poet. Monet had one older brother: Leon Pascal Monet. For an education, Monet went to study at Le Harve secondary school of the arts. Later in his life he became a student of the artist Charles Gleyre.

Monet had many friends that were also in a profession that revolved around art. His friends included Camille Pissaro, Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley, and Frederic Bazille. In 1870 Monet married Camille Doncieux. They had two children. The older of the two was Jean Monet, and the youngest was Michel Monet. The couple separated in 1879. Then, in 1892 Monet married Alice Hoschede. They did not last forever, for they separated in 1911.

Monet had many struggles in his life time. His first major struggle came when he was just a boy. His mother died, and she was the only one in his family who had supported his artistic efforts, so she was very dear to him. Later in his life, after his marriage to Camille, he was in a dire financial straits right around the time that the couple were expecting the birth of their first son. Monet reached out to his father for help, but the old man refused to give them a penny. Another example of Monet’s struggles was happening all throughout his career as a painter. He was known to suffer bouts of depression and self-doubt. Those feelings led him to destroy (burn, cut, or kick) approximately 500 pieces of his artwork.

Monet mostly worked with the medium of oil paints. His paintings were realistic, but with broad strokes that added a sense of fantasy to the paintings. He was an impressionist artist. His most famous works include Sunrise, Water Lilies, and Haystacks. My two personal favorites of his are “Springtime” and “Rocks at Port-Coton, The Lion Rock, Belle-Ile.” Springtime was a painting of the orchard of Monet’s garden at Giverny in 1886. The Lion Rock was a painting of the west coast of Brittany- the effects of sea and sky on the Atlantic coast were very different to those he experienced in Normandy.

Many important historical events occurred during Monet’s lifetime. The first was the American Civil War in 1861. Then, in 1862, Emancipation Proclamation freed slaves. After that, Lincoln was assassinated in 1865. The Spanish-American War broke out in 1898. One final example of a major historical event that Monet lived through was the Franco-Prussian war, which raged from 1870-1871.