MONET CLAUDE

Claude Monet (1840 - 1926) was both the most typical and the mostindividual painter of impressionism. His long life and extraordinary workcapacity - coupled with a sometimes furious perfectionism - he dedicatedto a pictorial exploration of the sensations which reality, and inparticular landscape, offer the human eye. But while Monet the painter wasfaithful and persevering in the pursuit of his motifs, his personal life -characterized by frequent travels and changes of location - followed amore restless course. Parisian by birth, he discovered plein-air paintingas a youth in the provinces and sought to defy his family's insistenceupon an academic painter's training. For over half his life the artist wasplagued by financial worries, which in part precipitated the frequent movesmade by his expanding household. Two of his homes stand out above the rest.The first, Argenteull, has come to represent the artistic flowering andofficial establishment of impressionism as a movement, with Monet as itscreative leader. But it was also Monet who, in his endeavour to capturethe ever-changing face of reality, went beyond impressionism and therebybeyond the confines of the self-conta