Virtual Museum

Monet

Claude Monet, born on November 14, 1840, in Paris and deceased on December 5, 1926, in Giverny, stands as the emblematic figure of Impressionism, a revolutionary artistic movement of which he was both the initiator and most steadfast advocate. Trained under painter Eugène Boudin, who taught him plein-air painting, he early developed a fascination with the changing effects of natural light that would become the guiding thread throughout his oeuvre. It was his canvas “Impression, Sunrise” (1872), exhibited at the group’s first exhibition in 1874, that inspired critic Louis Leroy to coin the term “Impressionist,” initially used pejoratively but quickly embraced by the artists themselves. Despite decades of financial difficulties and delayed recognition, Monet pursued with remarkable obstinacy his pictorial exploration, producing masterful series devoted to Haystacks, Rouen Cathedral, and Water Lilies, in which he methodically analyzed atmospheric and luminous variations on a single motif.

Monet’s permanent settlement in Giverny in 1883 marked a turning point in his career, enabling him to create the water garden that would become his open-air studio and the primary subject of his final decades of creation. The “Grand Decorations” of Water Lilies, conceived for the Orangerie des Tuileries and completed despite progressive cataracts that altered his vision, constitute the culmination of his research and prefigure the abstract developments of twentieth-century art. His revolutionary approach to color, his technique of divided brushwork, and his conception of painting as capturing the fleeting moment rather than the permanent subject radically transformed Western visual perception. Liberated from academic conventions, Monet established a new pictorial paradigm prioritizing the subjective experience of the visible world, paving the way for modern explorations of color and light and permanently inscribing his work as a pivotal moment in the history of Western art.

Artworks

Water Lily Pond by Claude Monet, 1900

Claude Monet: Water Lily Pond

This work immerses us in Claude Monet’s quintessential impressionist universe. “Water Lily Pond” (1900) reveals the painter’s complete mastery in

Search for an artist or an artwork