Claude Monet was born in Paris on November 14, 1842 to a Parisian grocer. When Monet rejected his father's call to join the family business, he was sent away to fight for the French army in Algeria. After two years in the army, however, he fell horribly ill with typhoid fever. His aunt rescued him from his military service on the condition that he enroll in an art course at college. Money did as he was told, but he soon became bored by the techniques and styles taught at the French Art Academy. In 1862, Monet teamed up with a bunch of renegade Parisian artists, including Alfred Sisley and Pierre Renoir. Together, these artists developed so-called open-air styles which rejected the somber, realistic styles taught in the French Academy. In 1866, Monet gained regional recognition for a painting entitled, "The Woman in the Green Dress," which lushly depicted a woman named Camille who later became his wife. After fleeing France during the Franco-Prussian war, Monet returned to create one of the most seminal pieces in the Impressionist canon. Known as "Impression, Sunrise," it garnered the critical scorn of a well-regarded writer of the time, Louis Leroy. Leroy's rejection of Monet's work ironically led to its further prominence. In time, Monet's so-called impressionist school of France earned the empathy of Emperor Napoleon III. After Monet's wife, Camille, died of tuberculosis, Monet met another woman named Alice Hoschede. He moved with her to a house in Normandy and painted pastoral scenes in his garden for the rest of his life. |
