Oscar-Claude Monet

Claude Monet was the founder of French Impressionist painting.

At the age of fifteen, Monet was known as a French cartoonist. In his school years, he liked to depict his teachers in an irreverent manner. Soon, many Parisians asked him to paint caricatures of individual people.

The term “Impressionism” is derived from the title of his painting “Impression, Sunrise”, which exhibited in 1874. He had the ambition to document the French countryside. This made the painter adopt his method of painting the same scene many times to capture the changing of light and the passing of the seasons.

Key ideas:

– Monet’s technique was unique. It featured expressive smears, a lack of depth and descriptive details, a manner of writing in the open air, the feeling of being present right here and right now, and the completion of pictures on the spot. All this generated amazing and charming images.

– The main subjects of his paintings were air and light, and his main principle was the quick depiction of the object in the open sky. He invented the technique of making a large series of landscapes (several dozens’ worth) with the same content that changed depending on the weather, the time of daylight and the time of a year. Monet perfectly transmitted the variability of light, the variety of atmospheric phenomena and the instantaneous changes of nature at different times.

– Monet’s favourite genre was the landscape. His technique destroyed the stereotypes of the 19th century. He created a unique world in which the momentary state of nature reigns supreme. The artist depicted special moments on his canvases.

– The artist often painted several pictures simultaneously. He illustrated the state, lighting and general view of each object in a short period. He created one painting in less than 30 minutes.
Before depicting a building, Monet studied the change in lighting and colour combinations on the facade of the building from the early morning, trying to catch their momentary stay. He changed canvases every 30 minutes, working until evening. The artist depicted his impressions of the changing colours of the cathedral. He created about 50 paintings of these architectural structures.