Monet's life

Monet was born in Paris in 1840, and died in Giverny in 1926.

Monet's prodigious talent was first recognised by the landscape painter Eugène Boudin, whom he met in Le Havre in 1858. Boudin encouraged Monet to give up drawing caricatures and to paint en plein air (in the open air), which he did in the company of both Boudin and Johan-Barthold Jongkind.

Monet studied for a short (1862–64) but decisive time under the painter Charles Gleyre (1808–1874) in Paris. Not only did Gleyre encourage his students to go their own way, but it was there that Monet met Frédéric Bazille (1841–1870), Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Alfred Sisley. These artists would later become fellow Impressionists.

After limited success at the Salon during the 1860s, Monet became a leader of a group that exhibited independently of the Salon. This group was called 'the Impressionists' after the title of one of Monet's paintings: Impression, Sunrise (Impression, soleil levant).

Monet chose to live not in Paris but in the suburbs, ever further from the art capital, drawing on his surroundings for motifs. For additional challenges, he travelled to the coasts of France, as well as to Norway, London, and Venice.

He was a canny businessman, playing art dealers off one another and carefully orchestrating his exhibitions and their attendant publicity.

In 1883, Monet moved to the village of Giverny, 60 kilometres north-west of Paris, and in 1890 bought property there. He worked on the grounds for decades, diverting streams and maintaining a water garden. The area around Giverny and his gardens provided the motifs for his series of paintings of single motifs.

Source: Monet and the Impressionists exhibition catalogue:
Shackelford, George T M. Monet and the Impressionists. Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 2008

Learn more in the exhibition:
> Monet's early career
> Sources of inspiration
> Monet and Japanese art
> Monet's series