Claude Monet Timeline

Claude Monet 39

1840 Claude Monet born in Paris Oscar-Claude Monet, 14 November Born on the rue Laffitte to a grocer's family. He went by Oscar as a boy and signed his early caricatures with that name.
1845 The family moves to Le Havre A childhood on the Normandy coast Monet grew up beside the Channel, and the changing light on water that preoccupied him for sixty years was the light he first knew.
1856 – 1858 Caricatures in a shop window His first paid work As a teenager Monet sold sharp pencil caricatures of Le Havre locals for ten or twenty francs each — enough to make him locally known before he had painted anything.
1858 Eugène Boudin takes him outdoors The decisive encounter Boudin persuaded a reluctant Monet to paint in the open air. Monet later said it was as if a veil had been torn away and he suddenly understood what painting could be.
1861 – 1862 Military service in Algeria Cut short by typhoid Conscripted into a light cavalry regiment, Monet fell ill within a year and an aunt bought him out of the remaining service. He said the African light stayed with him.
1862 – 1864 Gleyre's studio in Paris Where he meets Renoir, Bazille and Sisley The friendships formed in this academic studio became the core of the group that would exhibit together as Impressionists a decade later.
1862 Meets Johan Jongkind The second teacher of his eye The Dutch painter worked in rapid watercolour studies of shifting weather. Monet called him the true master who finished the education of his eye.
1865 First works accepted at the Salon Two seascapes Both were hung and both were noticed — an orthodox start for a painter who spent the next twenty years being rejected.
1865 – 1866 Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe A twelve-foot canvas, abandoned Monet's answer to Manet, painted life-size in the forest at Fontainebleau. He never finished it, later left it as security for unpaid rent, and recovered it mildewed and cut into pieces.
1866 Camille — The Woman in the Green Dress Painted in four days A full-length portrait of Camille Doncieux that was the hit of the 1866 Salon and briefly made Monet a name to watch.
1867 Jean is born Concealed from his family Monet's father disapproved of Camille and cut off his allowance. The couple lived in real poverty in the years after their son's birth.
1870 – 1871 Exile in London Escaping the Franco-Prussian War Monet crossed to England rather than be conscripted, painting the Thames in fog while Paris was besieged.
1870 Marries Camille Doncieux Four years after the portrait They married in Paris in June, weeks before the Franco-Prussian War drove them out of the country.
1871 Meets Paul Durand-Ruel The dealer who kept them all alive Durand-Ruel began buying Monet in London and went on backing the Impressionists through years when almost nobody else would, nearly bankrupting himself doing it.
1871 Sees Turner and Constable In the London galleries The encounter with Turner's dissolved light and weather is often read in the atmospheric handling of everything Monet painted afterwards.
1871 – 1878 The Argenteuil years Impressionism on the Seine A riverside town outside Paris where Monet painted regattas, bridges and gardens, and where Renoir, Manet and Sisley came to work alongside him.
1872 Impression, Sunrise painted The painting that named the Impressionist movement Monet painted Impression, Sunrise in 1872 depicting the harbour of Le Havre at dawn. When exhibited in 1874, a critic used its title to mockingly coin the term "Impressionism" — the name stuck.
1873 The floating studio A boat fitted out to paint from Monet converted a small craft with a cabin so he could work from the middle of the Seine, at the water's own level. Manet painted him in it.
1874 First Impressionist exhibition Monet co-founds the group show Monet co-organised the first Impressionist exhibition in Paris in April 1874, showing alongside Degas, Renoir, Pissarro and Sisley. The exhibition was savaged by critics but marked the birth of the most influential art movement of the 19th century.
1877 Gare Saint-Lazare Twelve canvases of a railway station Monet talked the station master into holding trains so the steam would billow as he wanted. It is the first time he worked one motif repeatedly under changing conditions.
1878 Michel is born A second son, in deepening poverty Camille never recovered from the birth. The family was by now sharing a house with the bankrupt Hoschedés at Vétheuil.
1879 Camille dies Aged thirty-two Monet painted her on her deathbed and was afterwards disturbed to realise he had been studying the colours moving across her face rather than simply grieving.
1883 Monet moves to Giverny Creates his famous garden Monet moved to Giverny in 1883, renting a house with a large garden he would transform into one of the most famous gardens in the world. The water lily pond he created there became the subject of his greatest works.
1886 Belle-Île The wild Atlantic coast Ten weeks on a storm-battered Breton island, painting black rocks and heavy sea — the harshest landscape he ever took on.
1888 Antibes Mediterranean light Monet complained the southern light was so clear and so blue that he had no idea how to paint it, then produced some of his most luminous canvases there.
1890 Buys the house at Giverny After seven years as a tenant Success at last let Monet purchase the property outright, and he immediately began remaking the grounds.
1890 – 1891 Haystacks series First major series paintings Monet's Haystacks series (1890–91) was his first major exploration of painting the same subject under different light conditions. The 25 canvases sold out immediately at his 1891 exhibition, making him wealthy for the first time.
1892 Marries Alice Hoschedé After sixteen years together They married once Alice's estranged husband died. Between them the household held eight children from two families.
1892 – 1894 Rouen Cathedral series Thirty canvases of one facade Monet rented rooms opposite the cathedral and worked on many canvases at once, switching as the light moved. The stone dissolves into pink, blue and gold.
1893 Builds the water garden Diverting a branch of the Epte Local farmers objected that his exotic plants would poison the water. Monet won the permit, dug the pond and built the Japanese bridge — and made his subject for the next thirty years.
1896 – 1926 Water Lilies series 250 paintings over three decades Monet painted over 250 Water Lilies canvases from the late 1890s until his death in 1926, focusing obsessively on the pond at Giverny. The monumental panels donated to France are permanently displayed at the Musée de l'Orangerie in Paris.
1899 – 1901 The London series Parliament, Charing Cross, Waterloo Working from a Savoy balcony and a hospital terrace, Monet chased the fog through nearly a hundred canvases, finishing most of them back in France.
1908 Venice Ten weeks, thirty-seven canvases A late trip with Alice. Monet said the city was too beautiful to be painted, and painted it anyway.
1911 Alice dies He barely paints for two years Monet was seventy-one and the loss stopped his work almost completely. His eyesight began failing in the same period.
1912 Monet diagnosed with cataracts His eyesight deteriorates Monet was diagnosed with cataracts in 1912. As his vision deteriorated, his palette shifted towards warmer, hazier tones. He refused surgery for years, fearing it would affect his colour perception.
1914 Jean dies His elder son, aged forty-six Jean's widow Blanche — also Monet's stepdaughter — moved in to care for him and stayed until his death.
1914 – 1918 Large Water Lily panels begun Monet's gift to France after WWI Monet began his monumental Water Lily panels in 1914, working in a specially built studio at Giverny. Inspired by the end of World War I, he donated them to the French state in 1922 as a monument to peace.
1918 Offers the panels to the state The day after the Armistice Monet wrote to Clemenceau proposing the great water lily decorations as a gift to France, a monument to peace. Clemenceau held him to it for the rest of his life.
1923 Cataract surgery Colour returns, but altered After years of refusing, Monet had his right lens removed. Reds and yellows had dominated his blinded years — afterwards he saw blues and violets too strongly and reworked canvases accordingly.