Claude Monet
is regarded as the
archetypal Impressionist in that his devotion to the ideals of the
movement was unwavering throughout his long career, and it is fitting that
one of his pictures Impression: Sunrise
(MusÊe Marmottan, Paris; 1872) gave the group his name.
His youth
was spent in Le Havre, where he first excelled as a caricaturist but was
then converted to landscape painting by his early mentor Boudin, from whom
he derived his firm predilection for painting out of doors. In 1859 he
studied in Paris at the Atelier Suisse and formed a friendship with
Pissarro. After two years' military service in Algiers, he returned to Le
Havre and met Jongkind, to whom he said he owed `the definitive education
of my eye'. He then, in 1862, entered the studio of Gleyre in Paris and
there met Renoir,
Sisley, and Bazille, with whom he was to
form the nucleus of the Impressionist group. Monet's devotion to painting
out of doors is illustrated by the famous story concerning one of his most
ambitious early works, Women in the
Garden (MusÊe d'Orsay, Paris; 1866-67)....>>>
