Claude Monet

Claude Monet (1840–1926) was a French painter and the artist most closely identified with Impressionism. Born in Paris and raised in Le Havre, he learned to paint outdoors from Eugène Boudin before studying in the capital. His canvas Impression, Sunrise, painted in 1872 and shown in 1874, gave the movement its name, and he helped organise that first group exhibition. Monet often worked in series, returning to a single subject under changing light and weather: Haystacks, Poplars, Rouen Cathedral and views of the Houses of Parliament in London. From 1883 he lived in Giverny, where he bought the house in 1890 and developed the garden and water-lily pond that occupied much of his later life. The Water Lilies series, begun around 1899, became his largest undertaking, and his panels of it were shown at the Musée de l'Orangerie in Paris from 1927. Monet died at Giverny in 1926, aged 86.