CLAUDE MONET

Claude Monet

Claude Monet

When French impressionist printers are talked about, Monet is always on the top of the list. Growing up in France put him in contact with many artists. Several of these artists helped influence his many paintings. His art style called impressionism became very will known and his paintings today are worth millions of dollars and are found throughout museums around the world.

Claude Monet was born November 14, 1840 in Paris, France. He grew up in LeHavre, France as the son of a grocer. As a child, he was free to roam the Norman coast and the Seine estuary. It was here that he learned to love the power and constant movement of the sea. These experiences would greatly influence his works of painting as he got older. By the age of fifteen he excelled as a caricaturist and sold them for as much as twenty francs. About 1856 he met a man named Eugine Boudin who encouraged him to paint outdoors. It was during these teen years that he studied drawing, and painted landscapes outside with French painter, Eugene Louis Boudin. Boudin was his early mentor from who he picked up his firm natural ability for painting out of doors. In 1859 at the age of 19 he studied in Paris at the Atelier Suisse and formed a friendship with another painter, Camille Pissarro. At one point he had to spend two years in military service in Algiers. Because of illness he returned to Le Havre. Once again he met up with Boudin and painted along the coast with him. During this time he met another painter, Johan B. Jongkind. Jongkind and Boudin both, who were landscapists, were Monet's only artist masters that he worked with and taught him their techniques. In 1862 at the age of ...