Monet the painter and the gardener was most often drawn to outdoor motifs.

Claude Monet

Claude Monet

Claude Monet was a French painter whose work spanned the late nineteenth through the early twentieth centuries. Sometimes called the Father of Impressionism, his artistic contemporaries included Renoir, Pissarro, Sisley, Cézanne, Degas, and Morisot among others.

Realism was the dominant art movement in France in the mid-1800s. Perhaps influenced by the evolution of photography, artists painted their subjects realistically. That is to say, subjects were represented as they appeared to the eye rather than in a romanticized, idealistic way.

Conversely, Impressionism was less about visual accuracy and more about perception. Emphasis on the changing effects of light and time created images focused on atmosphere rather than precise depictions of subjects.

Monet and his fellow Impressionists were the harbingers of the Modern art movement, dominant until the 1950s. And Monet himself would come to influence Abstract Expressionist artists of the twentieth century.

What’s Your Sign? … Wait … What?

Born November 14, 1840, in Paris, Monet was a Scorpio. As such, he truly embodied the intense, sensual, passionate traits of the sign along with moodiness and a bad temper. Obsessive and controlling, when life threw him curve balls, anxiety and depression were Monet’s typical responses. And like some Scorpios, he was definitely a player who could test people’s emotions. Also, Monet was not beyond twisting reality to suit his own manipulative purposes.

Introspective and a nonconformist, he also exemplified the Scorpionic affinity for nature. This trait would be evident in a large body of Claude Monet’s work. When his family moved near Le Havre on the Normandy coast, Monet was often drawn to the sea. Pencil sketches of sailing ships and nautical themes were among the artist’s earliest works as a child.

Daddy Issues

Monet was not the ideal student. That’s right, even geniuses often didn’t pay attention at school, if that makes you feel better.

Fidgety, he would often draw cartoons on and in his schoolbooks. Claude-Adolphe (papa Monet) was not pleased. He wanted Oscar-Claude (the artist’s birth name) to take over the family business as wholesale grocers to the shipping industry.

True to his zodiac, Monet resisted. By the age of 15 he was already plying his artistic talents. Drawing charcoal caricatures of the Le Havre locals signed “O Monet”, he charged 10 to 20 francs for each rendering.

His mother, who supported Monet’s creative streak, died in 1857. His aunt—herself an amateur painter—then guided Monet to local artist Eugène Boudin. Later in life Monet would acknowledge: “If I have become a painter, it is entirely due to Eugène Boudin.”

When the French army came calling in 1861, papa passed on purchasing an exemption from conscription for his son because Monet refused to give up painting. After a year in Algiers with the African Light Cavalry, Monet contracted typhoid. In the aftermath, his aunt stepped in to help end his military service, returning Monet to France.

Painting a Picture

Although he is most often associated with paintings which reflect the Impressionism ideal, Monet’s tastes and talents transcended this.

His aforementioned penchant for creating caricatures and cartoons is one example. But Monet was also professionally known for portrait painting in his early years.

However, most of Monet’s paintings featured outdoor motifs. This began with his childhood sketches of the sea off the Normandy coast. However, Eugène Boudin introduced Monet to en plein air painting. The term can be literally translated to “in the open air”—a revolutionary artistic approach to depicting nature.

While European landscape painting had been around since the 16th century, these works were typically produced in studios. Rather than direct portrayals of their subject in real time and space, paintings were recreated from artists’ recollections.

A Beautiful Obsession

Plein air painting would become a hallmark of the Impressionist movement. The effects of changing light on a subject or scene became an obsession for Monet. He would often recreate then same motifs at different times of day, in various seasons, and under changing weather conditions.

Living in a Parisian suburb in the 1870s, Monet became so committed to the concept of painting en plein air that he made a floating art studio. Monet’s bateau-atelier was his platform on the River Seine from which he painted water scenes.

Monet moved to a village in northern France in 1883. His home at Giverny and its gardens would be the backdrop for his famed Water Lilies series. Posting easels around the pond of this property, Monet would capture the same space from different positions and in different light. In all, over 250 paintings would become part of the series through his death in 1926.

Doodles to Dollars … umm … Francs

Claude Monet was true to the starving artist stereotype for much of his early life. Having said that, he was also prone to exaggeration. Pleading how dire his financial straits were enabled Monet to regularly grub from relatives, friends, and patrons.

On the one hand, creditors seized his paintings while in Paris during the 1870s. Legend even has it that Monet and his close friend Renoir had to live off potatoes for a year.

Conversely, during that same time he had two servants and a gardener for his home. And he did buy that boat—his floating art studio. Livin’ like a refugee in London during the Franco-Prussian War, “roughing it” meant stayin’ at the Savoy. [Rooms 610 and 611 of the storied hotel are still named “The Monet Suite” in his honor.]

Nonetheless, the Parisian art scene at home was dominated by the conservative Salon de Paris. And the club traditionalists often rejected the works Monet and his contemporaries for admission into their exclusive art exhibitions.

With the economy still recovering from the war, support from longtime patrons also waned. What was a struggling artist to do?

Leaving an Impression

Monet, along with Renoir, Pissarro, Sisley, Cézanne, Degas, and Morisot took financial and artistic matters into their own hands. In 1874, they formed the Anonymous Society of Painters, Sculptors and Engravers organizing their own art exhibition.

There was no jury to get all judgy and the art and the event were open to all—well, anyone willing to pay the 60-franc admission price.

While there were no judges, art critics did attend. Among them the famed Louis Leroy wrote a hostile review specifically targeting Claude Monet’s Impression, Sunrise. Karma being karma, Leroy called the painting “impressionistic”—and not in a good way. The name stuck! And Impressionism was born from a snide remark that the art critic would later regret. It forever linked Leroy with the movement he’d meant to disparage.

Show-Me-the-Money Monet

Coinciding with the family’s move to Giverny, Monet went on a series of trips. Painting landscapes in Italy, tulips in the Netherlands, and finding an eager market for his work in America, Monet’s financial troubles ended by the end of the 19th century.

Though the Giverny property began with a house, a barn that doubled as a painting studio, orchards, and a small garden, Monet’s newfound wealth enabled massive expansion. The small garden alone grew to almost an acre.

A gardener and an architect of his surroundings, all manner of flowers and even an orchard were planted to Monet’s exacting specifications. He purchased more land, a water meadow, and even rerouted a nearby river to feed his garden.

In addition to native, French water lilies Monet imported exotic varieties from South America and Egypt. The Japanese-style bridge and waterlily pond were inspired by the artist’s large collection of Ukiyo-e wood block prints.

Six gardeners were hired to maintain his property. When Monet was set to paint his treasured water lilies, a gardener would paddle into the pond to dust them.

Claude Monet would also build a greenhouse and a second studio, lit by spacious skylights. It was in Giverny that groups of artists (many of them American) would come to learn from the Impressionist master.

Oscar the Grouch

Conversely, Monet’s Giverny neighbors were not fans of his garden, him, or his friends.

Local cattle farmers and were afraid the nonindigenous plants would poison the water and kill their livestock. Although the Giverny authorities told him to remove the foreign foliage, Monet ignored them. 

Impatient and known for his crankiness and vile temper, Monet surrounded himself with fellow curmudgeons. His neighbors found his friends, like French statesman and Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau along with artist Auguste Rodin, equally difficult to tolerate.

Given the aforementioned daddy issues, history of financial struggles, health challenges, and personal losses (Monet outlived two wives and his firstborn son), no surprise that Monet suffered from depression. As a result of one extreme bout of despondence, he even tried to drown himself in the Seine once.

Much of his anger was self-directed. Monet was his own harshest critic and destroyed over 500 of his own paintings in fits of anger and depression later in life.

Not-So-Model Relationships 

Call it scandalous liaisons, but Monet’s love life was the stuff of soap operas.

Camille, his first wife, was originally his mistress and a focus of papa Monet’s disapproval. In 1876, while married to Camille, Monet began an adulterous relationship with Alice Hoschedé. Infidelity aside, Alice’s husband was one of Monet’s earliest patrons and benefactors. So much for the hand that feeds you.

When Camille became ill after the birth of her second son with Monet, Alice left her husband and moved in with the couple. Camille died of cancer in 1879, and Monet went on to marry Alice. Together they would raise a combined family of eight children.

But it gets better!

Monet’s firstborn son, Jean, married Alice’s daughter, Blanche.

In the 1920s, Monet himself had “a relationship” with Blanche. When Jean and Alice died, the two were married.

Somehow my online dating experiences don’t feel quite as crazy now.

For My Foodies … Some Breadcrumbs

A gastronome, Monet loved good food and cooking. He even kept detailed culinary records of his repasts in his journals. Yes, these have been compiled and there is a cookbook of Monet’s recipes.

Very much a creature of habit, Monet ate at the same time every day with his family.

Given the previous few paragraphs on those family ties, I can’t say how those meals went down.

Claude Monet’s Legacy

Painting and his gardens were Monet’s life. By his own account, these often took precedence over and distanced him from his family.

From 1915 and until his death in 1926, Monet created a cycle of huge murals which were installed at the Musée de l’Orangerie in Paris. The series of monumental Nymphéas were donated by Monet to the French government honoring the end of World War I. Eight 14-foot-wide paintings remain exhibited in an elliptical display in the museum. French painter, André Masson called the installation the “Sistine Chapel of Impressionism” in 1952.

Meanwhile, the New York City arts community of the 1940s and 50s saw a major revival of interest in Monet’s work. As a result, Abstract Expressionism was born with Monet’s influence over painters like Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock, and Willem de Kooning. Monet’s use of subject series, as exemplified by Water Lilies, would also come to influence the later Pop Art and Minimalism movements.

The Musée Marmottan Monet in Paris features over three hundred Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings by Claude Monet. That includes his 1872 Impression, Sunrise, which prompted critic Louis Leroy to inadvertently give Impressionism it name.

Monet’s heirs bequeathed the Giverny property to the Académie des Beaux-Arts. As a result, the artist’s home and beloved gardens now welcome over a half million visitors annually.

 

Featured Art 🎨 “Bridge over a Pond of Water Lilies”

 

                             

How About YOU! 

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