By
Students of 6th Grade of 9th Primary School of Serres, Greece
And
Students of class 5A GPD di Colleferro, Italy
Oscar Claude Monet was born on the 14th of November 1840 in Paris. When he was 5 years old his family moved from Paris to the seaport town of La Havre. At school he preferred creating doodling funny pictures of his teachers than studying. At the age of 15 Claude started drawing and selling cartoonish of local people and save up some money.
One day, Monet met the artist Eugene Boudin. Boudin took him along to paint with him nature and introduced him to a new technique called painting in open air.
Life in Paris
Claude moved to Paris to study painting at the Acade4mie Suisse. There he learned to paint live models and met artists and writers in the cafe4s of Paris.
The disease in Africa
Monet spent his early twenties as a soldier in French North Africa. Τhere he caught typhus. It’s a bacterial disease that originates in contaminated food or water.
Again in France: new techniques of painting
Claude was cured by his aunt and when he was better, he came back to Paris. There, Monet started to paint outside and with other artists (like Bazille and Renoir), developed a new technique : quick brushstrokes and daubs of colour .
First successes: sea landscapes and Gardens
Claude Monet lived in his Giverny house for 43 years. There, he designed his flower and water gardens. He also loved drawing the water, its multiple colors, its reflections and its depths.
The journey in London to escape from the war
In 1870 , Claude moved to London because the Franco- prussian war broke out. There.he painted scenes of the smoky grey city. In 1871 France lost the war and Monet came back home.
The birth of the impressionism. I love painting oh the boat
Monet's early career painting "Impression: Sunrise, 1872" is often cited as the source of the name "Impressionism". He wanted with this painting to capture the essence or the impression of the sunrise he saw before him.
In 1874 , Claude and his friends decided to hold an independent exhibition but it was not successful and many people made fun of their paintings.
The fame
Monet attracted the dedicated support of collectors throughout his career. His unparalleled public appeal and his reputation established him as one of the most significant and popular figures in the modern Western painting tradition.
In 1880 Claude bought a pink house with a garden in Giverny . There, he planted many flowers like irises (his favorite flowers, in all the colours of the rainbow), bamboo, azaleas, roses, tulips… He created a pond and filled in with water lilies. Many other artists would travel to Claude’s garden to paint.
The eyes disease and the death
Monet had a cataract forming over one of his eyes. Despite failing eyesight, he continued to paint almost until his death in 1926.
