Biography of the Artist Claude Monet

Oscar-Claude Monet was a French painter who was born November 14, 1840 in Paris, France. Throughout Monet’s life, he was constantly struggling financially and would live off the success of his artwork. Monet had to overcome obstacles such as: death and depression.

Monet was an only youngest child, he had a brother named Leon Pascal who was 4 years older than him. Their father Adolphe -a business man- wanted his son, Claude, to pursue a career in business. He wanted Monet to follow in his footsteps and become successful.

Monet had other interests. Instead of pursuing a career in business, he was interested in art. From a young age Claude enjoyed drawing and would often go out to the beach to paint. He attained good grades but was not too fond of school. During class he would paint pictures of his teachers and sell them. At the age of seven-teen, his mother became ill and died. The death of his mother at such a young age impacted Monet drastically.

He became depressed and his grades began to slip. His father thought it would be good for Monet to go live with his aunt. While he spent time at his aunt’s house, she encouraged him to paint. At the age of twenty-one Claude joined the army but became sick, so he went back to live with his aunt. When he came back from deployment, Claude had the chance to go a university, but he chose a free studio instead. Here is where he met other artists and his soon to be wife, Camille.

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Claude and Camille got married in June 28 and had a child. Monet was constantly struggling financially, even before his he got married. Claude would sell the paintings that he would make in order to provide for his family. Until he met Ernest Hoschedé who bought Impression, Sunrise. Monet is known for using impressionistic painting techniques. This technique is accomplished using a large, flat oval like, tipped brush. Impression, Sunrise is a quintessential example for this technique. This type of technique is used mainly to capture light rather than capturing details. In this painting, Monet uses cool tone colors such as: blue and

greens. He uses warm tones like red, orange and pinks as well as the use of dark tones: grey, and blacks. He uses the cool, warm, and dark hues to capture the actual lighting. By incorporating all these pigments together, he captures the atmospheric perspective when the sun rises.

When he painted this painting, Monet used blues, purples, and pinks in the sky to represent the actual perspective of the break of dawn and the passage of time. Dawn is when the pinkish sunlight starts to appear in the sky as the sun is rising. In this painting the darkness is represented by the blues and purples, but when the sunlight starts to peak through the darkness, he uses baby pink, orange and blues mixed together to signify that morning is coming. The more you observe the painting, you notice little details such as: the pinkish white reflection of the sun glistening in the water, the reflection of the boats and docks, the land in the back ground, and the boats floating through the mist right-side up. Monet uses rhythm in the water by creating the illusion of the people in the boat rowing which is signified by small waves. He also uses diagonal lines in the sky to show that the clouds in the sky are moving.

Monet died on December 5, 1926 at the age of 86 from lung cancer. Throughout his life he struggled financially mentally and physically. He sold his paintings to the ones