His homes and gardens became gathering places for friends, including Manet and Renoir, who often painted alongside their host ( 1976.201.14). Returning to France, Monet moved first to Argenteuil, just fifteen minutes from Paris by train, then west to Vétheuil, Poissy, and finally to the more rural Giverny in 1883. His landscapes chart journeys around the north of France ( 31.67.11) and to London, where he escaped the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71. His first wife, Camille ( 2002.62.1), and his second wife, Alice, frequently served as models. Monet found subjects in his immediate surroundings, as he painted the people and places he knew best. Yet the artists saw the criticism as a badge of honor, and subsequently called themselves “Impressionists” after the painting’s title, even though the name was first used derisively. Impression, Sunrise (1873 Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris), one of Monet’s contributions to this exhibition, drew particular scorn for the unfinished appearance of its loose handling and indistinct forms. Yet rejection of many of his more ambitious works, notably the large-scale Women in the Garden (1866 Musée d’Orsay, Paris), inspired Monet to join with Edgar Degas, Édouard Manet, Camille Pissarro, Renoir, and others in establishing an independent exhibition in 1874. Monet enjoyed limited success in these early years, with a handful of landscapes, seascapes, and portraits accepted for exhibition at the annual Salons of the 1860s. His classmates included Auguste Renoir, Frédéric Bazille, and other future Impressionists. When he was twenty-two, Monet joined the Paris studio of the academic history painter Charles Gleyre.

Raised in Normandy, Monet was introduced to plein-air painting by Eugène Boudin ( 2003.20.2), known for paintings of the resorts that dotted the region’s Channel coast, and subsequently studied informally with the Dutch landscapist Johan Jongkind (1819–1891). He led the way to twentieth-century modernism by developing a unique style that strove to capture on canvas the very act of perceiving nature. Throughout his long career, Monet consistently depicted the landscape and leisure activities of Paris and its environs as well as the Normandy coast. The only institution to hold the last paintings of The Japanese Bridge and The House Seen from the Rose Garden, the Musée Marmottan Monet, home of the world’s leading collection of works by Monet, offers a unique experience of his art in terms of both quantity and rarity.Claude Monet was a key figure in the Impressionist movement that transformed French painting in the second half of the nineteenth century. Never shown during the artist’s lifetime, these works were exhibited for the first time when they entered the Museum. The Locomotive Taking a Walk in Argenteuil The Pont de l’Europe, Gare Saint-Lazare The Houses of Parliament London, Reflections on the Thames, etc.) the ensemble is notable for the monumental canvases representing the water lilies and garden at Giverny. In addition to masterpieces from the artist’s youth and maturity ( The Train in the Snow. It thus inherited both the house in Giverny and the works that had remained in the family: over a hundred canvases retracing the career of the leading figure of Impressionism.

In 1966 came another major event in the life of the collections: the museum became the universal legatee of Claude Monet via his son Michel. This painting, which has gone down in history for inspiring the name of the movement, was the foundation stone of the Museum’s Impressionist collections. The Musée Marmottan Monet opened its spaces to Impressionism in 1940, when it became home to Monet’s iconic Impression, Sunrise.

Claude monet art Impression Sunrise