McNeely 1 Jacob McNeely Raymond English 1103 10/28/13 Claude Oscar Monet Monet was born on November 14,

1840 on 45 rue Lafitte, in the Ninth Arrondissement of Paris. His parents were second generation from Paris. He was Baptized at the local parish Church. Early on his father pushed him into the family business of Groceries, but he didnt want any of it. On April 1, 1851 he enrolled at Le Harvey secondary school for the arts. To pay his way through it he sold charcoal caricatures for several francs a piece. These caricatures helped get him locally famous. When he was only sixteen years old his mother, Louise-Justine Aubre Monet, passed away, so when he was away from school he would go stay with is aunt who was a widow. Two years into a seven year commitment with the first regiment of African Light Calvary in Algeria he contracted Typhoid fever and his aunt got him out of the military so long as he agreed to finish an art degree at a university. Confused by traditional art distributed by universities he got inspiration from outside of the university system. His new found friends

McNeely 2 shared with him new approaches to art. One approach being painting the effects of light with a broken color. This approach was later known as Impressionism. Shortly after the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War during July of 1870, Monet took refuge in England in September 1870. While there he studied the works of John Constable and Joseph Mallord William Turner, both of these men's influences would serve to inspire Monet's innovations in the study of colors. In May of 1871 he left London and went to live in Zaandam. Here he painted twenty five works there. In November of 1871 he moved back to France to live in Argenteuil where he painted what some would consider his best works. He most famous of these works being the Sunrise Claude Oscar Monet Biography. These important works that he crafted made him one of the main leaders of the Impressionist movement in the 1870's and 1880's. Which is interesting because when Monet started out he was more traditional, but by the later 1860's he started to develop his own style thanks to his friend Manet. In the 1880's and 1890's his style comes into full bloom and he perfected his style with his unique color choices Claude Monet. One of Monet's most famous works was done towards the later part of life. This is his paintings of his Water Lilley Pool, which was done in the last ten years of his life. These are very peaceful works they have a vast range of colors and show the many effects of light that his impressionism is famous for. He did several of them on circular canvases which set them apart from his usual pieces. During this period towards the end of his life Monet had not painted this much since had started his career as a much younger man. He painted until his death in 1926

McNeely 3 when he passed away from lung cancer at the age of 86. He wanted a simple funeral so only around fifty people showed up Spate. I am not an art fanatic, but when I view Monets work I begin to appreciate what art is and how it displays someones true emotions. I can feel the amount of work and detail he put into every work. They werent just random happenings, he thought long and hard about what he wanted each piece to portray and made sure every brush stroke was perfection. I have a lot of respect for him because of his dedication from an early age. If more people had the same drive as him there is no telling the kind of changes we would see in as small of a period of time as a decade.

McNeely 4 Works Cited "Claude Oscar Monet Biography". ClaudeMonetgallery.org. n.d. Web. 30 October 2013. "Claude Monet". TheArtStory.org. n.d. Web. 30 October 2013. Spate. Claude Monet Life and Works. New York. Rizzoli. 1992. Print.