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Claude Monet: Works
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In the 1874 exhibition, Monet showed four pastels and five paintings, among them a work entitled Impression: Sunrise (1872-1873, Musée Marmottan, Paris). Inspired by this title, French art critic Louis Leroy coined the term impressionist in a satirical review of the exhibition. His comments criticized the artists for painting so loosely and neglecting to blend their brushstrokes carefully in order to achieve the polished effect that was then expected. Although Impression: Sunrise is an elegantly balanced composition, it demonstrates much of what was radically new about the impressionist manner. Monet’s swift strokes capture a momentary effect of light on water in a busy port, while mist and smoke blur the angular forms of sailboats.
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Monet's paintings from the 1870s reveal the major tenets of the impressionist vision. Along with Impression: Sunrise, Red Boats at Argenteuil (1875) is an outstanding example of the new style. In these paintings impressionism is essentially an illusionist style, albeit one that looks radically different from the landscapes of the Old Masters. The difference resides primarily in the chromatic vibrancy of Monet's canvases. Working directly from nature, he and the impressionists discovered that even the darkest shadows and the gloomiest days contain an infinite variety of colors. To capture the fleeting effects of light and color... Monet gradually learned that he had to paint quickly and to employ short brushstrokes loaded with individualized colors.
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After Camille’s death, Monet and Alice Hoschedé continued to live together, waiting until Ernest Hoschedé died before marrying in 1892. Monet continued to exhibit with the Impressionists on an irregular basis, choosing ... to show his work at the Salon in 1880, in a solo exhibition at Galerie Durand-Ruel in Paris in 1883, and at several of Georges Petit’s Expositions Internationales de Peinture. In 1889 Galerie Georges Petit staged a major retrospective of his work, showing 145 paintings. Two years later Durand-Ruel mounted an exhibition of Monet's first series paintings, Grainstacks, which were met with great critical acclaim. The artist continued his exploration of series in his paintings of poplars and of the Rouen Cathedral, documenting in a succession of canvases subtle shifts in light or focus.
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Monet was born in Paris, France. His family moved to Le Havre in Normandy when he was five. His father wanted him to go into the family grocery store business, but Claude wanted to paint. Eugene Boudin, an artist who worked extensively on plein air paintings - quick sketches made in open air - at beaches in Normandy, taught him some painting techniques in 1856. Monet had to serve in the army in Algeria. His aunt Lecadre agreed to get him out of the army if he took an art course at a university.
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Monet's development can be summarized in a handful of pictures that must stand for many hundreds. He was an insatiable worker. Red Boats at Argenteuil painted in 1875, is a fully developed impressionist landscape of the period of the first group exhibition. The stretch of water is shot through with strokes of blue in many different shades. The reflections of boats and shore are struck into it freely, in bright tints of greens and pinks. On its sunny side, the largest of the boats is yellow in the highest lights, shot with lavender near the water, yet a bright rosy color overall.
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After having experienced extreme poverty, Monet began to prosper. By 1890 he was successful enough to buy the house at Giverny he had previously rented and in 1892 he married his mistress, with whom he had begun an affair in 1876, three Years before the death of his first wife. From 1890 he concentrated on a series of pictures in which he painted the same subject at different times of the day in different lights - Haystacks or Grainstacks (1890-1) and Rouen Cathedral (1891-5) are the best known. He continued to travel widely, visiting London and Venice several times (and ... Norway as a guest of Queen Christiana), but increasingly his attention was focused on the celebrated water-garden he created at Giverny, which served as the theme for the series of paintings on Waterlilies that began in 1899 and grew to dominate his work completely (in 1914 he had a special studio built in the grounds of his house so he could work on the huge canvases). In his final years he was troubled by failing eyesight, but he painted until the end, completing a great decorative scheme of water-lily paintings that he donated to the nation in the year of his death. They were installed in the Orangerie, Paris, in 1927.
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