Claude Monet Essay -- Artists Impressionism Painters Painting Essays

Claude Monet Claude Monet made the art community address a revolutionary type of art called impressionism. In a style not previously before painted, impressionism captured a scene by using bright colors with lots of light and different shades to create the illusion of a glance. The traditional method of working in a studio was discarded and the impressionist artists carried any needed supplies with them into the countryside and painted the complete work outside. The manufacture of portable tin tubes of oil paints as well as the discovery of ways to produce a wider range of chemical pigments allowed artists to paint in a way unimaginable before this period in time (Stuckey 12). Monet and others, such as Pierre Auguste Renior, Paul Cezanne, Edgar Degas, Berthe Morisot, Edouard Manet, Camille Pissarro, and Alfred Sisley, took this style of art to a new level never seen before. Claude Monet was born on November 14, 1840, in Paris, France and moved to LeHavre with his family at age five (Skira 21). As a schoolboy, Monet doodled in the margins of his books. His artistic career began by drawing caricatures of his schoolmasters distorting their faces and profiles outrageously. By the time he was fifteen, people would pay ten or twenty francs for one of his drawings (Skira 22). In 1857 Monet met the famous landscape painter Eugene Boudin, who was in the LeHavre area. Boudin noticed Monet's talent when he saw his caricatures. Boudin took Monet to the countryside and showed him what it was to paint something of art. Monet was quoted as saying, "it was as if a veil was torn from my eyes and I understood what painting should be (Stuckey 186)." Monet used the money earned from selling his caricatures to pay for a trip to Paris in 18... ...f 86 and after outliving many of his fellow artists, Claude Monet died leaving a legacy of works devoted to the way he saw the world. Everything in life was a magnificent symphony of colors in Monet's eyes. He brought to canvas the technique of preserving one particular moment in time by developing the style of presenting the first impact of what an eye would capture in one glance before the brain had the chance to create the exact image of the subject in the mind. Today over 2,000 oil paintings and 600 pencil sketches are exhibited in museums, galleries, and with private art collectors (Stuckey 10) allowing the world to appreciate Monet's vision forever. Works Cited House, John. Monet. London: Phaidon Press Limited, 1977. Skira, Albert. Claude Monet. NY: Crown Publishers, 1972. Stuckey, Charles F. Claude Monet 1840 – 1926. NY: Thames & Hudson, 1995.