Claude Monet
Who
French painter, the central figure of Impressionism and its longest-lived practitioner. Spent his last four decades painting the garden and pond he built at Giverny.
Why they matter
He made the *series* a way of working: the same haystack, cathedral or lily pond painted dozens of times at different hours to catch changing light. The late Water Lilies, painted at mural scale with failing eyesight, are a direct ancestor of abstract painting.
What to buy
Prints: any large water-lily canvas reproduces well because the image is already loose. Museum shops (Orangerie, Marmottan, the Met) are the reliable sources; Amazon results are mostly canvas-print factories. Books: Taschen's Monet volume for the pictures; the Marmottan catalogue for the early work. Originals: not realistic. Monet drawings and pastels are rare and go through the major houses.
Notes
The Marmottan holds the largest Monet collection, including Impression, Sunrise. The Orangerie's two oval rooms of Water Lilies were installed to Monet's own design and opened in 1927, the year after his death.
Story
The name of the whole movement is an insult that stuck. At the first independent exhibition of April 1874, held in the photographer Nadar's former studio on the boulevard des Capucines, Monet showed a hazy view of the port of Le Havre and, needing a title for the catalogue, called it Impression, Sunrise. The critic Louis Leroy, writing in Le Charivari, titled his mocking review "Exhibition of the Impressionists" and had a fictional academic painter complain that wallpaper in its embryonic state was more finished than that seascape. The painters adopted the label within a few years. The painting itself was stolen from the Marmottan in 1985 and recovered in Corsica in 1990.
Key works
- Impression, Sunrise (1872) - Musee Marmottan Monet, Paris
- Woman with a Parasol (1875) - National Gallery of Art, Washington
- Rouen Cathedral series (1892-1894) - various
- Water Lilies (Nympheas) (1897-1926) - Musee de l'Orangerie and many others
In museum collections
- Garden at Sainte-Adresse (1867)
The Met ↗ · Find a print ↗ - Woman with a Parasol – Madame Monet and Her Son (1875)
National Gallery of Art ↗ · Find a print ↗ - Women in the Garden (1866)
Musee d'Orsay ↗ · Find a print ↗ - The Magpie (1868)
Musee d'Orsay ↗ · Find a print ↗ - La Grenouillère (1869)
The Met ↗ · Find a print ↗ - Regatta at Sainte-Adresse (1867)
The Met ↗ · Find a print ↗ - Madame Monet wearing a kimono (1876)
MFA Boston ↗ · Find a print ↗ - Régates à Argenteuil (1872)
Musee d'Orsay ↗ · Find a print ↗ - The artist's garden at Giverny (1900)
Musee d'Orsay ↗ · Find a print ↗ - San Giorgio Maggiore at Dusk (1908)
Art UK ↗ · Find a print ↗ - Springtime (1872)
Walters Art Museum ↗ · Find a print ↗ - The Poppy Field near Argenteuil (1873)
Musee d'Orsay ↗ · Find a print ↗
See the work
Prints
Books
See also
Browse all 2,101 artists · Open in the directory · Where the work hangs: 262 museums on a map