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Monet Essay, Research Paper

Claude Monet is one of the most familiar and best loved of all Western artists. His images of poppy fields, poplar trees, water lilies and elegant ladies in blossoming gardens are familiar to people who have never seen the original paintings and may never have visited an art gallery. Monet’s works have won a place in the affection of the general public that seems almost without parallel. (Rachman, 4) In the decades since his death in 1926, Monet’s work has been intensely studied by a variety of art critics. However, none of his works have been as deeply studied as those done in Giverny, in the early twentieth century. During this time Monet’s paintings, which focused on specific subject matter from various viewpoints, became the most famous of his career and also the most analyzed, bringing forth a variety of different opinions.

Monet’s parents were members of the lower middle class, the ‘petite bourgeoisie’. His father, Claude Adolphe Monet, had been enrolled in the merchant navy at the channel port of Le Havre. However, in 1835, when he married Louise-Justine Aubry, he was living in Paris. The couple’s first son, Leon, was born in 1836, and their second and last child was born on November 14, 1840 and baptized Oscar-Claude Monet. Monet’s parents seemed to have kept some sort of shop there, but it apparently did not flourish, and around 1845 they left Paris for Le Havre. There Claude Adolphe had a half-sister who had married into a prosperous merchant family. Marie-Jeanne Lecardre was some years older than Monet’s father, and her husband was willing to employ him in their grocery business. In 1857 Monet’s mother died and his aunt, childless, artistic and comparatively wealthy, became the main supporter of his early art career. (Gordon, 35)

Monet’s early training as an artist seems to have been confined to conventional drawing lessons at the school he attended in Le Havre. He and his brother were sent to the local secondary school, which provided a traditional education in the classical languages and commerce. Leon went on to study chemistry, a serious and solid profession in which he did well, but Oscar-Claude was of less credit to his parents. He claimed that ’school always felt like a prison’. As an elderly man he insisted that he had never paid attention to lessons, spending his tome doodling, ‘I drew garlands in the margins…and covered the blue paper of my exercise books with the most bizarre ornaments’. At some time between 1855 and 1857 Monet left school and expressed the wish to become a painter. (Gordon, 37)

By the time he was seventeen, Monet was already making money from his work and had won a local reputation as a caricaturist. Skillful and amusing, his caricatures were displayed in the window of a local frame maker, Monsieur Gravier, where they drew crowds of appreciative viewers. Gravier also displayed paintings by the landscape painter Eugene Boudin, who was an old friend of his. Monet’s development of friendship and informal tutelage of Boudin proved to be formative for Monet’s future direction as a landscape painter. (Gordon, 38)

In 1859, Monet set off to study painting in Paris. Paying his way with the 2,000 francs saved from the sales of his caricatures, he set himself up in the city with supreme confidence. During this time Monet was living a very bohemian type of lifestyle, selling whatever paintings possible in order support himself. In 1865, Monet began to regularly submit works to the Salon, one of the largest and most prestigious window shops in France, which posted the works of ‘up and coming’ artists. During the 1860’s audiences were enormous, up to 400,000 visitors for a single exhibition, and the publicity generated by a good Salon review could make an unknown painter rich and fashionable within a year. After one exhibition the conservative critic, Paul Mantz, commented positively on Monet’s The Pointe de la Heve at Low Tide and the painting was sold to print publisher and dealer, Alfred Cadart, for 300 francs. This was the first time Monet had sold a serious work in Paris, and it had gone to good company. (Gordon, 41)

Monet’s reputation was now one of a serious artist and set him on his way towards public recognition. His name continued to grow throughout the 1870’s as he developed his unique painting style and proceeded to sell his paintings, forming his own group of collectors. (Gordon, 41)

When Monet moved to Giverny in 1883, the town was similar to most of the farming communities that lay along the Seine between Paris and Rouen. It had a modest church, communal school, town hall, a few taverns and family owned shops. Quiet and picturesque, it had no claim to historical significance and counted no more than 279 residents. The pink stucco house that Monet rented was one of the largest structures in the town and sat on a sizable portion of land. The rue De l’Amiscourt, which wound into the village, bordered the back of the house. Stretching out in front of the house were nearly two and a half acres that the former occupants had converted into a kitchen garden with rows of vegetables interspersed with fruit trees and berry bushes. (Tucker, 175)

When the property came up for sale in November 1890, Monet quickly met the asking price of 22,000 francs. He then set up plans for dramatic changes to the property, tearing down the kitchen garden and fruit trees, in order to create lavish flower gardens surrounding the house and extending throughout the property. Monet spent a great deal of money and time on this project, subscribing to horticultural magazines, consulting encyclopedias, ordering seeds from around the world, and consulting friends. He also extended his property in order to construct a large water lily pond, surrounding it with mysterious, foreign, Eastern plants and trees. Through these efforts, not

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