Monet's early career

Monet's talent was evident very early. When he was 17 or 18, his caricature drawings were admired by Eugène Boudin, the foremost landscape painter in Monet's home town, Le Havre. Boudin invited the young Monet to accompany him to paint the landscape en plein air (in the open air).

'At that moment my way opened and my fate was sealed', Monet remembered. 'I would be a painter come what may'.

Woodgatherers at the edge of the forest and Rue de la Bavole, Honfleur were painted when Monet was 23 or 24 years old. The locations they depict – the forest of Fontainebleau and a town in Normandy – were important centres for landscape painters of the previous generation. Monet's principal concern here is to render the fall of light, and seize the general unity of the scene. There is a striking brevity of description and detail, and colour becomes the fundamental basis of painting.

From the very beginning, Monet's paintings attracted both admiration and criticism. His great skill in observation was acknowledged, but the severe judgment of his aunt, Madame Lecadre, was often echoed by his detractors: 'His studies are always sketches, but when he attempts to finish, to make a genuine picture, they become frightful daubs'.

To address these perceived weaknesses, in 1862 Monet went to study under the painter Charles Gleyre in Paris, where his fellow students – and, later, fellow Impressionists – included Frédéric Bazille, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Alfred Sisley.

Source: Maloon, Terence. Monet and the Impressionists exhibition brochure.
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 2008

Works in this section

Woodgatherers at the edge of the forest  c1863, Claude Monet.
Oil on panel. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston: bequest of Mrs David P Kimball

Rue de la Bavole, Honfleur  c1864, Claude Monet.
Oil on canvas. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston: bequest of John T Spaulding

In the exhibition

> Sources of inspiration
> Monet and Japanese art
> Monet's series