French · 1840–1926
Claude Monet
Sixty years spent painting not things, but the light between them.
- 81
- works indexed
- 49
- on view now
- 3
- institutions
- 1
- country
Biography
Claude Monet gave the movement its name — a critic's sneer at his Impression, Sunrise — and then outlived every argument about it. His subject was never really the haystack, the cathedral, or the pond: it was the specific minute of light in which they stood, painted in series so the minutes could be compared.
At Giverny he built the garden he would paint for thirty years, ending in the vast water-lily decorations that dissolve subject, horizon and edge altogether — canvases that point straight at abstraction, made by a man in his eighties who was slowly losing his sight.
Identifiers
- Biography: ART MAP editorial. Works and display states: museum collection data.
A life in the collection
Biography events from the ART MAP knowledge graph, interleaved with dated works.
1840
Born in Paris, raised in Le Havre where Boudin urges him to paint outdoors
1855/56
Caricature of a Man with a Large Nose
Art Institute of Chicago
1857
Boy in the Country
Art Institute of Chicago
c. 1858
Caricature of Henri Cassinelli (“Rufus Croutinelli”)
Art Institute of Chicago
c. 1859
Caricature of Auguste Vacquerie
Art Institute of Chicago
c. 1862/1863
Still Life with Bottle, Carafe, Bread, and Wine
National Gallery of Art
c. 1864
Cliffs and Sea, Sainte-Adresse
Art Institute of Chicago
c. 1865
The Luncheon on the Grass
National Gallery of Art
1867
The Beach at Sainte-Adresse
On view · Art Institute of Chicago
1868
On the Bank of the Seine, Bennecourt
On view · Art Institute of Chicago
1872
Impression, Sunrise — the painting that accidentally names a movement
1872/1873
Ships Riding on the Seine at Rouen
On view · National Gallery of Art
1873
The Artist's House at Argenteuil
On view · Art Institute of Chicago
1874
Co-organizes the First Impressionist Exhibition in Paris
1874
The Bridge at Argenteuil
On view · National Gallery of Art
1875
Woman with a Parasol - Madame Monet and Her Son
On view · National Gallery of Art
c. 1876
Bridge at Argenteuil on a Gray Day
National Gallery of Art
1883
Settles at Giverny and begins shaping its gardens
1890
Begins the great series: Wheatstacks, then Poplars and Rouen Cathedral
1899
First paintings of the Japanese footbridge and water-lily pond
1926
Dies at Giverny at 86, the Grandes Décorations nearly complete