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Claude Monet – The Man Behind Impressionist Art Movement

Impression Sunrise, Claude Monet

Claude Monet started a simple painting but turned into something more because of a painting he named Impression Sunrise. Because of the given name artist all over the world decide to call the whole art movement and style the Impressionist Art. Monet was soon considered as the founder of impressionist art right then.

Monet did not have an easy or exciting life before he created Impression Sunrise. Instead his life remained simple and included him moving all over France and England to paint with and meet with many different artist during the time period.

At the age of sixteen Monet was mentored by Eugene Boudin. He once said “If I become a painter, it is to Eugene Boudin that I owe that fact. During this time he painted his first landscaped called View from Rouelles . The painting appeared in an exhibition on August to September in 1856 in the Le Harve. However for 100 years the painting was lost and later rediscovered and finally positively identified as the original piece.

In 1862 Monet joined the studio of Charles Gleyre in Paris. Charles Gleyre was a Swiss born painter. During this time he met Alfred Sisley, Frederic Bazille and Pierre-Auguste Renoir. These four artists had a new way of creating art. They would use rapid brush stokes and also broken color to paint the effects of light on different subjects. This type of art was considered Impressionism but at the time there wasn’t a name for it.

After marrying Camille Doncieux in 1870 and the couple having their first son in Jean who was born in 1867, the couple left France when the Franco-Prussian War started and took refuge in London. While in London, Monet met the English landscape painters, John Constable and Joseph Mallord William Turner. These painters inspired Monet to study colors more and the innovations of colors. During this time Monet also met Camille Pissarro and Charles Daubigny and also Mr. Durand Rual. Mr. Durand Rual also exhibited some of Monet’s work a number of times and bought several Monet oil paintings as well.

After this Monet traveled to Antwerp, Belgium and also the Netherlands before he returned to France to allow his family to settle in a village near Paris called Argenteuil. They lived at this location from 1871 to 1878. During this time Monet often painted with his friends including Renoir, Caillebotte, Sisley and also Edouard Manet. At this period in this life he painted the first impressionism piece to give the movement a really name. The most famous painting Monet painted is Impression Sunrise. It was painted between 1872 to 1873. During his time in Argenteuil, Monet painted his most famous and best pieces of art.

It was the art critic Louis Leroy who decided the word Impressionism would be the perfect term for the kind of art being made at the time. The term was first thought of as derogatory but later Impressionists liked the termed and actually considered it a great word to fit their style perfectly.

In 1874 the Impression Sunrise painting was exhibited in the studio of Nadar at the first impressionist exhibition. Today, the painting is proudly displayed in the Musee Marmottan-Monet in Paris.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 20th, 2011 at 1:53 pm. It is filed under ART ARTICLES and tagged with Claude Monet, French artist, Impression Sunrise, Impressionism, impressionist art. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.