Facts about the artist Claude Monet

CHILDHOOD

• Monet was born on 14h November 1840.
• From the age of 5, he was brought up in Le Havre in Northern France.
• He enjoyed watching the fishermen at the port.
• At school he drew boats.
• At 8 years old, Monet sold his first painting.
• The proprietor of a painting shop let him display his paintings in the window.
• People pressed their noses up to the window to see his amazing work.

YOUNG PERSON

• A famous painter invited Monet to join him on a painting weekend on the beach.
• After this experience, Monet decided to become a painter.
• His parents were horrified.
• They wanted their son to take up a respectable profession.
• At 20 years old, Monet enrolled in a school of art.
• His aunt gave him some money.
• She loved painting and believed in the talent of her nephew.
• She was convinced Monet would become a great painter one day.

EARLY PAINTING

• Monet liked to work in the country with his painter friends.
• Not far from Paris, in the forests of Fontainebleau, he would set up his easel and paint the countryside and the people who were walking at the weekend.
• He especially liked to paint the sun reflecting on the water.
• He gave birth to a new style.
• He used little blobs and dabs of colour on his brush to form impressions.
• Nothing was realistic.

FAMILY LIFE

• Monet married wife Camille.
• At this time, he painted scenes of his family. His wife and children often appear in his paintings.
• He sold his paintings for small amounts of money, so his family were quite poor, but sometimes he was given some commissions to paint.
• His fellow painter Renoir also helped him with money.
• The first impressionist art exhibition took place in 1874 in Paris.
• Monet exhibited a painting called Impression of a Sun Rise.
• After having seen this painting, an art critic started to call his work impressionism.

IMPRESSIONISM

• The impressionist artists included: Monet, Renoir, Pissarro and Sisley
• They used to paint outside.
• They tried to paint light. Monet used several canvases at the same time to try to capture the moment when the light changes, so he painted the sea in blue, green and white. He used eighteen canvases in the same day, as he painted Rouen Cathedral, blue in the morning, pale yellow at noon and pink in the evening.
• They painted outside, so they could paint the colours of nature. The painted water so it sparkled, leaves to reflect the sun and even stone walls could shimmer.
• Impressionist artists painted everyday life and the new technology of the day, like steam trains.
• They used three primary colours: red, blue and yellow and mixed them into other colours but never used black.
• At first, people did not understand the paintings because they were not realistic like photos.

LATER LIFE

• Other famous painting by Monet include: paintings of the seaside, of lakes, Rouen Cathedral, of London, water lilies, the Japanese bridge and the haystack.
• After Camille’s death, at the age of 32, he married family friend Alice in 1883.
• Monet bought a boat which he turned into an art studio.
• By the time he was forty, impressionism had become popular and Monet had achieved success. His paintings sold in the United States and Paris.
• In old age, when he was painting the water lilies, he nearly went blind and had to have an operation on his eyes.
• He died in Giverney at the age of 86.

Write an information leaflet about Monet. Write up these facts about the artist Claude Monet in your own words. Use a variety of sentences: simple, compound and complex. Use good words. First write the introduction. Then, write a series of paragraphs about different aspects of Monet’s life. Next, write a conclusion. You could include your opinion about Monet’s paintings