Claude Monet "Father of Impressionist Period"

Early life of Claude Monet.  

He was born Oscar Claude Monet on November 14, 1840.  His father Claude Adolphe worked in his family’s shipping business where he was known as a shop keeper and his mother Louise was a trained singer who took care of the family.  Monet was born in Paris France and lived there until he was five.  His father was offered a job by his brother-in-law and the family moved to Le Havre, a port town in the Normandy region.  He grew up there with his older brother Leon.

Monet got his primary education at a private school and in 1851 he entered the Le Havre secondary school of arts.  Monet did not like being confined to a classroom.  At an early age, Monet developed a love of drawing.  He filled his schoolbooks with sketches of people, including caricatures of his teachers.  Locals knew him well for his caricatures.

In 1858 Monet was introduced to Eugene Boudin a local landscape Artist, who became his first mento and taught him to use oil paints and outdoor techniques for painting.  At age 16 Monet left school and went to live with his widowed aunt in Paris where he enrolled as a student at the Academic Suisse.  Later he meet his biggest influence and mentor Johann Barthold Jongkind, who was also a landscape painter.

Camille Doncieux Monet meet Camille Doncieux  in 1866.  She was 18 years old when she posed for Monet one of his most famous paintings called, “The woman in green dress”.  She also became Monet’s favorite model as well as his mistress.    They married on June 28, 1870.  It was during this time that Monet painted various works of modern life.

Camille developed tuberculosis in 1876 and died from this disease in 1879 at the age of thirty-two.  Monet painted her one last time on her death bed. That would be the last time Monet would ever paint his beloved Camille.  She left behind two children.  Claude and Camille had two children together. 

1) Jean Armand Monet was born on August 8, 1867 before Monet married Camille.  He is often seen in many of Monet’s paintings alongside his mother.  He later married Blanche Hoschede daughter of Alice Hoschede in 1897.  She was very fond of Claude Monet and painted alongside him. 

2) Michel Monet was born in March 17 1878. 

Alice Hoschede is the nurse who helped Camille during her sickness.  Alice and her husband Ernest and their six children moved in with the Monets after Ernest went bankrupt 1877.  Ernest, however, spent most of his time in Paris, and eventually abandoned his family and went to Belgium. Monet had several difficult months following the death of Camille; a grief-stricken Monet (resolving never to be mired in poverty again) began to create some of the best paintings of the 19th century.  Alice Hoschede helped Monet to raise his two sons along with her six children in Paris.  Eventually joining Monet in Vetheuil, and then moving with him to Poissy in 1881 and finally settling in Giverny in 1883 after Monet discovered Giverny on a little train between Vernon and Gasny.  The relationship between Claude Monet and Alice Hoschede developed and became official although they remained unmarried. After Ernest Hoschede died in 1891 Claude Monet and Alice Hoschedé married in 1892.  

Monet painted several groups of landscapes and seascapes in what he considered to be campaigns to document the French countryside.  His extensive campaigns evolved into his series’ paintings.  He worked on the paintings exhaustively, despite poor health and double cataracts, until  he died from lung cancer on December 5, 1926.  He was 86 years old.  He is buried in the Giverny Church Cemetery.