Throughout his life, the famous French painter Claude Monet was engaged in creative work, creating his own unique style. Nowadays, he is often called the founder of the flow of impressionism in the visual arts. At the same time, it is doubly surprising to read Monet’s biography, since he had no significant prerequisites for becoming one of the greatest artists in world history.
In childhood, the future artist hated school. He preferred to walk alone, climbing on the rocks and walking along the river, rather than sitting in the classroom. Claude Monet’s father wanted his son to follow in his footsteps and become a grocer, but life decided otherwise. The first painting of Claude Monet can be considered caricatures of his teachers, which he skillfully painted on the covers of his school notebooks. When he was only 15 years old, he was widely known throughout the city of Le Havre, as a master of caricature.
Since there were many who wanted to get caricature portraits from Claude Monet, he began to take money for it – 20 francs each, decent money for those times. So the future painter earned his first savings. Even in his youth, Claude Monet told his parents that he would go to study in Paris to become an artist. They did not support him, but they did not stop him either (see interesting facts about Paris). In the biography of Claude Monet it is mentioned that in his youth he hated the paintings of the marine painter Boudin, which were exhibited in the same shop as his cartoons. Later, Boudin became one of his artistic mentors, and Monet changed his mind. Once under a military appeal, the artist was sent to Algeria, but due to illness and due to the financial intervention of relatives, he was commissioned and sent back. The name of the genre “impressionism” comes from the name of one of the paintings of Monet – “Impression”.
Monet preferred to work not in the workshop, but in nature. By this he was fundamentally different from one of the most famous marine painter in the world, Aivazovsky, who created his masterpieces only in the studio (see interesting facts about Aivazovsky). A lucky chance influenced the life of Claude Monet – he won a rather large sum of money in the lottery. Immediately after that, he decided to quit his job and devote himself entirely to painting. Many of his paintings depict Camilla Donsier, his first wife.
Despite the fact that he was famous during Monet’s lifetime, at first the public did not perceive his canvases. Because of their bright colors, there were even rumors about the madness of their author. Works of Claude Monet are among the most expensive in the world. In general, he ranks third in the list of the most “expensive” painters of all time. The painter never painted in artificial light – only with natural light. When Claude Monet just started writing his famous Topol, he learned that the trees that served as a source of inspiration intend to cut them down. Then he, to complete the picture, simply bought a plot of land with these trees. Pictures of the authorship of Monet is in museums around the world, but most of them are stored in the United States, Russia and the UK.
