Claude Monet: His Painting Named a Movement – 250 Water Lilies Before Going Blind

French Impressionist Master Who Gave the Movement Its Name (1840-1926)

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Early Life on the Normandy Coast

Claude Monet was born on November 14, 1840, in Paris, the eldest son of Adolphe Monet, a grocer who also ran a ship chandlery business. When Claude Monet was five years old, the family relocated to the Normandy coast near Le Havre, where his father joined the family wholesale grocery business. Claude Monet’s childhood spent along the beaches of Normandy profoundly shaped his artistic vision, giving him intimate knowledge of the sea, sky, and the rapidly shifting Norman weather that would later dominate his paintings.

Claude Monet showed early artistic talent, though his initial efforts were not in painting. As a teenager, Claude Monet gained local fame for his caricatures of Le Havre residents, which he sold for ten to twenty francs each. Claude Monet’s life changed when he met the landscape painter Eugène Boudin, who introduced him to the practice of painting outdoors, directly from nature. This technique of “plein air” painting became the foundation of Claude Monet’s artistic approach.

Claude Monet’s family hoped he would enter their grocery business, but the young artist had other plans. Claude Monet refused enrollment at the prestigious École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, frustrating his family who wanted him to pursue a conventional artistic education. Instead, Claude Monet attended the Académie Suisse, where he met Camille Pissarro, beginning a lifelong friendship and artistic partnership.

Military Service and Artistic Development

In 1861, Claude Monet was conscripted into the French military and sent to Algeria, an experience that would prove unexpectedly valuable. Claude Monet later recalled that the distinctive light and color of North Africa had a profound impact on his artistic sensibility. Claude Monet’s military service was cut short when he contracted typhoid fever, and his aunt Marie-Jeanne Lecadre, an amateur painter herself, paid for his release from the army.

Returning to Paris in 1862, Claude Monet briefly studied in the studio of the academic painter Charles Gleyre. It was there that Claude Monet met Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley, and Frédéric Bazille, fellow students who would become his lifelong colleagues in the Impressionist movement. Claude Monet and his friends rebelled against the academic conventions taught in the studio, preferring to paint outdoors and capture the fleeting effects of light and atmosphere.

Claude Monet was also influenced by the Barbizon school painters, who had pioneered landscape painting in France, and by Japanese woodblock prints, which offered new perspectives on composition and color. Claude Monet collected Japanese prints throughout his life, and their influence can be seen in the flattened perspectives and bold colors of his mature work.

“I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers.”

Claude Monet

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The Birth of Impressionism

Claude Monet’s painting “Impression, Sunrise” (1872) gave the Impressionist movement its name, though the term was initially used as an insult. In April 1874, Claude Monet and his colleagues organized their own exhibition after years of rejection by the official Salon. The critic Louis Leroy attended the show and wrote a scathing review titled “Exhibition of the Impressionists,” mocking Claude Monet’s painting for its sketchy, unfinished appearance.

Claude Monet later explained how the title came about: “They asked me for a title for the catalogue. Because it couldn’t really be taken for a view of Le Havre, I said: ‘Put Impression.'” Edmond Renoir added “Sunrise,” and art history was made. Despite the critic’s hostile intent, Claude Monet and his friends embraced the term “Impressionist,” and it became the defining label for their revolutionary approach to painting.

Claude Monet’s technique broke dramatically from academic tradition. Rather than faithfully reproducing detailed scenes in the studio, Claude Monet sought to record the immediate impression that a momentary vision of a scene gave him. Claude Monet worked rapidly, using loose brushstrokes of pure color placed side by side, allowing the viewer’s eye to blend them together. Claude Monet painted the same subjects repeatedly at different times of day and in different seasons, capturing the ever-changing effects of light.

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Love, Loss, and Family

Claude Monet’s personal life was marked by both great love and devastating loss. In the early 1860s, Claude Monet met Camille Doncieux, an eighteen-year-old woman who became both his lover and his most frequent model. Camille appeared in many of Claude Monet’s early masterpieces, including “Woman in the Green Dress” (1866), which brought him his first significant recognition.

Claude Monet and Camille had their first son, Jean, in 1867, though they did not marry until 1870. A second son, Michel, followed in 1878. But Camille’s health was failing, possibly from uterine cancer, and she died in September 1879 at just thirty-two years old. Claude Monet painted his wife on her deathbed, later recalling that even in his grief, he found himself studying the play of color on her face.

Claude Monet’s second marriage came through unusual circumstances. Ernest Hoschedé, a wealthy department store owner and art collector, had been one of Claude Monet’s most important patrons. When Hoschedé went bankrupt in 1877, his family moved in with the Monets. After Camille’s death, Claude Monet continued living with Alice Hoschedé and their combined eight children. Ernest Hoschedé died in 1891, and Claude Monet married Alice the following year.

Alice brought stability and respectability to Claude Monet’s household, managing the large blended family with affectionate authority. In a poignant connection, Claude Monet’s son Jean later married Blanche Hoschedé, Alice’s daughter. When Alice died in 1911 and Jean in 1914, Blanche became Claude Monet’s devoted companion during his final years.

The Garden at Giverny

In April 1883, Claude Monet discovered the village of Giverny in Normandy and rented a house that he would eventually purchase in 1890. Claude Monet would live at Giverny until his death forty-three years later, gradually transforming the property into a living work of art. Claude Monet became as passionate about gardening as about painting, personally directing the planting and maintenance of his extraordinary gardens.

In 1893, Claude Monet purchased an additional plot of land across the road and the railway line from his house. Claude Monet obtained permission from the local authorities to divert water from the river Epte to create an artificial pond. Claude Monet planted the pond with water lilies ordered from specialist nurseries and constructed the famous Japanese bridge that would appear in so many of his paintings.

Claude Monet’s garden at Giverny was much more than a garden; it was his open-air studio and his primary subject for the last three decades of his life. Claude Monet employed several gardeners to maintain the property according to his precise specifications. The flowers were planted to create carefully orchestrated effects of color, and Claude Monet would work in the garden early each morning before beginning to paint.

“My garden is my most beautiful masterpiece.”

Claude Monet

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The Water Lilies

Claude Monet’s Water Lilies (French: Nymphéas) constitute one of the most ambitious artistic projects ever undertaken. From the late 1890s until his death in 1926, Claude Monet devoted himself primarily to this single subject, producing approximately 250 oil paintings of his water garden. Claude Monet painted the lily pond at all hours of the day and in all seasons, capturing the infinite variations of light on water.

In his later Water Lilies, Claude Monet progressively eliminated the horizon line and conventional spatial references. Claude Monet’s canvases became immersive experiences of color and light, approaching abstraction in ways that anticipated developments in twentieth-century art. Art historians have recognized Claude Monet’s late Water Lilies as a crucial link between Impressionism and Abstract Expressionism.

Claude Monet’s most ambitious Water Lilies project was the Grandes Décorations, a series of monumental murals intended to surround the viewer in a continuous panorama of water and flowers. On the day after the Armistice of November 11, 1918, Claude Monet offered these paintings to the French state as a symbol of peace. The Grandes Décorations were installed in specially designed oval galleries at the Musée de l’Orangerie in Paris in 1927, a few months after Claude Monet’s death.

Painting Through Blindness

Claude Monet began experiencing trouble with his eyesight around 1905, though he did not consult a doctor until 1912. Claude Monet was diagnosed with cataracts in both eyes, a condition that progressively worsened over the following decade. By 1922, Claude Monet’s vision had declined to 20/200 in his better eye, making him legally blind.

Claude Monet’s cataracts profoundly affected his painting. The condition impaired his ability to distinguish cool colors, and his works from this period are dominated by warm yellows, oranges, purples, and reds. Claude Monet’s brushstrokes became broader and his compositions more abstract, changes that were not intentional stylistic experiments but rather the result of his deteriorating vision.

Claude Monet resisted surgery for years, having seen fellow artist Mary Cassatt left essentially blind by a failed cataract operation. Finally persuaded by his friend Georges Clemenceau, the former French Prime Minister, Claude Monet underwent surgery in 1923 at age eighty-two. The procedure was difficult, requiring multiple operations and a lengthy convalescence that Claude Monet found almost unbearable.

With specially designed glasses, Claude Monet’s vision was restored to near-normal levels by 1925. Claude Monet was able to complete the Grandes Décorations, and his postoperative paintings show a return to the delicate blues and greens of his earlier work. Claude Monet destroyed many of the garish paintings he had created while his vision was impaired.

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Legacy and Influence

Claude Monet died on December 5, 1926, at his home in Giverny, at the age of eighty-six. Claude Monet had continued painting almost until the end, driven by an insatiable desire to capture the effects of light on his beloved water garden. Claude Monet was buried in the churchyard of Giverny, near the home and gardens he had created.

Claude Monet’s influence on subsequent art is immeasurable. Claude Monet helped change the world of painting by dissolving forms and liberating color from its traditional descriptive function. Claude Monet’s late Water Lilies, with their suppression of spatial references and their immersive fields of color, directly influenced Abstract Expressionists like Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, and Willem de Kooning.

Claude Monet’s home, garden, and water lily pond were bequeathed by his son Michel to the French Academy of Fine Arts in 1966. After extensive restoration, Claude Monet’s Giverny property opened to the public in 1980 and has since become one of France’s most visited sites, attracting over half a million visitors annually. The gardens continue to be maintained according to Claude Monet’s original plans, offering visitors a glimpse into the world that inspired his greatest paintings.

Viewing Claude Monet’s Work

Claude Monet’s paintings can be found in major museums throughout the world. The Musée Marmottan Monet in Paris holds the world’s largest collection of Claude Monet’s work, including “Impression, Sunrise.” The Musée de l’Orangerie houses the Grandes Décorations Water Lilies in their specially designed galleries. Major holdings can also be found at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the National Gallery in London.

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Visit Claude Monet’s gardens at Fondation Claude Monet in Giverny or explore his masterpieces at the Musée Marmottan Monet in Paris