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Claude Monet, who was born in Paris in 1840 and died in Giverny in 1926, is considered the father of Impressionism and one of the most celebrated and beloved artists of all time. His long career was marked by experimentation and innovation. His treatment of various subjects -- the Normandy coast, the Seine, water lilies, grainstacks, the facade of Rouen Cathedral -- is recognizable at a glance and attests to his remarkable talent for composition and the rendering of color and light.
Monet began his career as a caricaturist in Le Havre during the 1850s. A group of these works will be on view at the Albright-Knox during the exhibition. An early acquaintance with the French landscape painter Eugène Boudin, who painted the changing skies and sea along the Normandy coast, was the determining influence in Monet's formative years. The two artists, who shared a dedication to nature, enjoyed painting while outdoors.
In 1862, Monet moved to Paris and continued his training at the Paris studio of the academician Charles Gleyre. It was in the fertile environment of the Paris studios that he met Pissarro, Renoir, and Sisley, artists who accompanied him on outdoor painting excursions in the Forest of Fontainebleau.
After an initial success in the Salon of 1865, a large-scale work, Women in the Park, was rejected by the Salon of 1867, probably because Monet's use of color and light resulted in a simplification or abstraction of form. His methods challenged conventional practices and the authority of the French academy, which had been in place for more than 200 years. Monet left Paris with his companion, Camille Doncieux, whom he married in 1870, and their son, Jean, and settled near Bougival. Working with Renoir, he painted scenes on the fashionable beach, La Grenouillère. These works show highly sophisticated effects of color contrast and broken brushwork.
After several rejections by the Salon, Monet and his colleagues -- Pissarro, Sisley, and Renoir -- formed a society of independent artists to show their works. In 1874, their group exhibition in the old studio of the photographer Nadar at 35 boulevard des Capucines gave birth to the Impressionist movement, which takes its name from Monet's painting, Impression: Sunrise.
During the 1870s and 1880s, Monet continued to paint familiar scenes of the French countryside and often worked on the water in a specially outfitted studio-boat. He also searched out more dramatic scenery such as the rock formations at Belle-Isle and captured the industrial age with paintings based on the Gare Saint-Lazare, a railroad station in northern Paris.
During the 1890s, Monet began the splendid series of paintings that explored specific subjects viewed at different hours of the day and seasons of the year. In 1891, for example, Monet exhibited twenty-two paintings in a solo show at the Durand-Ruel Gallery; fifteen of the works were variations on the theme of grainstacks.
At the same time, he enlarged the water garden in Giverny, his sole source of inspiration during the last years of his life. Although some works of this period, such as The Japanese Footbridge, employ a traditional technique, others, particularly the series of water lilies, tend more toward abstraction. Their importance was officially recognized when Monet donated them to France in 1918. Monet's work on these water-lily murals for the Musée de l'Orangerie, Paris, occupied him until his death in 1926.
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