Reference

Claude Monet (1840–1926) Claude Monet Claude Monet Claude Monet Claude Monet Claude Monet Edouard Manet Claude Monet Claude Monet Claude Monet Claude Monet Claude Monet Claude Monet Claude Monet Claude Monet Claude Monet Claude Monet Claude Monet Claude Monet Laura Auricchio Department of Art & Design Studies, Parsons The New School for Design October 2004 Claude Monet was a key figure in the Impressionist movement that transformed French painting in the second half of the nineteenth century. Following in the path of the Barbizon painters, who had set up their easels in the Fontainebleau Forest (64.210) earlier in the century, Monet adopted and extended their commitment to close observation and naturalistic representation. Shortly after Monet died (a wealthy and well-respected man at the age of eighty-six), the French government installed his last water-lily series in specially constructed galleries at the Orangerie in Paris, where they remain today. Monet reports that he rented a room across from the cathedral’s western facade in 1892 and 1893, where he kept multiple canvases in process and moved from one to the next as the light shifted. Yet rejection of many of his more ambitious works, notably the large-scale Women in the Garden (1866; Musée d’Orsay, Paris), inspired Monet to join with Edgar Degas, Édouard Manet, Camille Pissarro, Renoir, and others in establishing an independent exhibition in 1874.

Claude Monet proved to be a significant figure in the history of painting and Impressionism, a revolutionary artistic movement of the 19th century. Alongside artists like Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Edgar Degas, Monet was one of the names who changed reality by defying the old artistic conventions, which gave birth to a new style that centered on

Monet's commitment to plein air painting allowed him to explore the nuances of natural light and its impact on color and form, as seen in both Impression, Sunrise and The Bodmer Oak. The immediacy of working outdoors blurred the lines between sketch and finished work, reinforcing the Impressionist belief in the importance of capturing the moment.