\paperw4395 \margr0\margl0 \plain \fs20 \f1 French painter. \par
Moving as a child to Le Havre with his family, it was here that he began to draw caricatures at a very early age
between 1856 and 1858. Around 1858 he met with EugΦne Boudin, who persuaded him to become a landscape painter in the Dutch tradition. In 1859 he went to Paris to bring himself up-to-date by studying the works of Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot and Charles-F
ranτois Daubigny at the Salon and to attend the AcadΘmie Suisse, where he met Camille Pissarro. He was called for military service in Algeria in 1861, and the following year he was in Le Havre and then Paris, where he came into contact with Pierre-August
e Renoir, Alfred Sisley, and Jean-FrΘdΘric Bazille. He stayed in the Forest of Fontainebleau with the latter in 1863, painting landscapes from life in a style close to that of the Barbizon School and Daubigny. In 1865 he met Gustave Courbet, whose influe
nce can be seen in paintings like \i Camille in a Green Dress\i0 from 1866 (Bremen, Kunsthalle). At the same time like other young artists, he was enthralled by Edouard ManetÆs picture \i Le DΘjeuner sur lÆHerbe\i0 , exhibited in 1863, which raised the
problem of the representation of figures \i en plein air\i0 . MonetÆs interest in this fundamental aspect of Impressionist research is demonstrated by a painting with the same title (\i The Luncheon on the Grass\i0 , 1865, fragments in Paris at the MusΘe
dÆOrsay) and by \i Women in the Garden\i0 (1866-67, Paris, MusΘe dÆOrsay). With their study of the reflections of light on water, the landscapes he painted during these years in Paris and along the Seine (\i La GrenouilliΦre\i0 , 1869, New York, Museum
of Modern Art û a bathing establishment on the banks of the river, not far from Paris, that was highly popular at the time) may be considered the first Impressionist pictures. It was in fact a picture painted by Monet in 1872 and exhibited by the photog
rapher Nadar in 1874, \i Impression : Soleil levant\i0 (\i Impression: Sunrise\i0 ), that suggested the derogatory name of the Impressionists to a hostile critic. This was later adopted as the official denomination of the group. In the meantime, a visit
to London in 1870 allowed him to make a closer study of John Constable and Joseph Mallord William Turner. His growing interest in the representation of light at various times of day and under different weather conditions led Monet to paint several serie
s of pictures of a single subject. The first example was the series of paintings from 1877 devoted to \i Saint Lazare Station\i0 , in which the painter concentrated his efforts on rendering the effect on light produced by smoke from the locomotives. The
series dedicated to Rouen Cathedral, painted during the years prior to 1894, consists of about fifty canvases and depicts the church at different times of day and under varying light conditions. In 1893 he had a small lake constructed in the garden of hi
s house at Giverny, a village near Paris where he had moved in 1883, and filled the lake with water lilies. Between 1909 and 1926, the year of his death, Monet painted innumerable pictures of these \i Water Lilies\i0 , taking his investigation of the eff
ects of light to the borders of abstraction. Part of this series, which he donated to the French State, is now on show in the rooms of the Orangerie in Paris.
