These are the 12 Most Famous Paintings by Claude Monet.
Claude Monet (1840-1926), a well-known French painter, was born in France. Giving rise to the Impressionist painting style, he became one of the founding members of the French Impressionist movement. He was a loyal and successful follower of movement theory, focusing on capturing form and light rather than realism.
Biography of Claude Monet
Life
Monet chose not to pursue his father’s merchant business as he wanted to become an artist. His academic studies, supplemented by his early work as a caricaturist, were eventually substituted by personal studies of nature en plein air, a method he was introduced to by his friend Eugène Boudin, a future landscape painter.
At the Académie Suisse art school, Monet made the acquaintance of Camille Pissarro, and soon afterward did part of his military service in French Algeria (1861-62). This was a truly formative experience for the artist Monet as he was amazed by the colorful glare of the Tunisian environment.
Monet’s first apprenticeship occurred under Jacques-François Ochard, a classicist disciple of David. He subsequently learned from Charles Gleyre (along with Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Frédéric Bazille, and Alfred Sisley), and also from Gustave Courbet. Like other innovators of his generation, Monet reacted against the studied formalities of the Realist standard. They were in fact destined to advance the Realist project to its ultimate, pre-avant-garde phase.
Founding of the Impressionists
Claude Monet became a part of the informal circle which was soon to pick up the accidental moniker ‘Impressionists’. Having won his first admission to the official Salon in 1865, Monet, like the rest of the group, struggled to be admitted again and suffered the same negative reception because of his experimental technique, despite his positive first outing.
Interestingly, Claude Monet’s Luncheon on Grass could not be finished for the 1865 Salon and would never thereafter be finished at all. Today a much-appreciated instance of the early Monet, it was a version of Édouard Manet’s work of the same name from two years prior and which had attracted so much express dislike when it was shown at the Salon.
Thus, he participated in the inaugural 1874 exhibition of the ‘Anonymous Society of Painters, Sculptors and Engravers’, which, thanks to his own Impression, Sunrise (1872), came to be described by the art critic Louis Leroy as “Impressionism.”
Exile in London
During the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, Monet sought refuge in London, where he first encountered the landscapes of John Constable and J.M.W Turner. He also met Paul Durand-Ruel, who was to become his art dealer of choice for the rest of his career. For most of his life, Claude Monet struggled with his finances.
The sale of his artworks was often difficult, both in pecuniary and emotional terms. Impression, Sunrise failed to sell for 1,000 francs at the inaugural exhibition and Monet was several times in his life under pressure from creditors.
Monet thought of his abandonment of France in the War of 1870 as a self-imposed exile. To the French soldiers who had died in the First World War, he would instead dedicate his Weeping Willow series.
For a period of five years after 1871 Monet resided in Argenteuil, in north-western France. He also traveled to the nearby Netherlands to see the country’s masters and to paint the emblematic tulip fields.
In Argenteuil Monet took to painting from a boat for the first time and to keeping a garden (Gladioli was painted in this period). The time in Argenteuil is when Monet became intimate with reflections of light and the chromatic projections of the flora onto the surface of the water. From London instead, he brought the habit of creating sketches of motifs for his future paintings — almost the only kinds of preparation that he undertook.
By the end of the 1870s, the Impressionist circle was already moving in various directions, according to primarily the individual artists’ approach to color. In 1876 Monet lost his first wife, Camille, to illness, a misfortune that ushered in a deeply melancholic period in his life. He turned to darker tones, pastel colors, and barer depictions of nature.
From 1883 Monet began renting a villa in Giverny, in the north of France, which he finally purchased in 1890. Its aquatic garden, constructed around an artificial lake, would become a permanent artistic studio for the rest of his life. He tended to the large garden both in person and through half a dozen gardeners that he was eventually able to employ. He selected the plants on the basis of their chromatic harmonies in the various seasons of the year and their reflections on the surface of the lake. He had a Japanese garden bridge constructed over one part of the lake. It was a part of his passion for Japanese artifacts — he possessed a collection of Japanese wood prints.
Monet’s exceptional gardening project was an attempt to create a nymphaeum: an edenic enclosure consecrated to beautiful expressions of nature. The garden was indeed his primary subject matter for the rest of his life. Its blossoms and groves, and their reflections in the water, he studied with an obsessive love for the fleeting moment in which the impression of beauty occurs.
Later Life
In the last two decades of his life, Claude Monet suffered from failing eyesight, having suffered from eye troubles from as far back as the 1880s. For a long while, he refused to submit to cataract surgery, having heard of its failures in the cases of some of his friends. He was able to combine a pair of differently tinted lenses afterward to recover some of his vision. He proceeded to destroy or revise the darkened paintings he had created in the period when his eyesight was weaker. He returned to the warm-cold opposition in pastel colors that he had begun practicing in the 1870s.
At the time of his death in 1926, Monet enjoyed a worldwide reputation and the esteem of Georges Clemenceau, the former prime minister, who attended his funeral with reverence.
Claude Monet’s Impact on Impressionism
Claude Monet is likely the most representative Impressionist, the artist whose dedication to light and colour as they are enjoyed in the unrepeatable instant was lifelong and spectacularly developed.
The Impressionists painted primarily en plein air and eschewed preparatory studies. In pursuit of the ineffable instant, Monet painted with quick brushstrokes. In Giverny, surrounded by his affectionately curated lilies, Monet placed himself in an artistic laboratory optimally suited to show the ways in which light reflects and the air plays on the watery surface. This neverending attempt to capture the evanescing glimpse was troubled, as Monet was well aware, by such impossibilities as capturing the impression of the transparency of air.
Monet was less attracted by the rusting scenery than some of his Impressionist friends. His paintings recurrently enclosed a dynamic development inside a scenery, an effect sometimes aided by the presence of human figures, usually, his wives or friends, whose movement and clothes vindicated the lively nature around them.
Critics have argued for the Expressionist value of Monet’s late-life compositions due to the deeply subjective origin of some of his colours. While partially blinded at one time, and later on affected by his cataract operation, Monet noted that he perceived colour differently from before. In his most difficult periods, he relied on his recollection of colours and even on labels that he placed on the tubes.
Claude Monet’s Famous Paintings
Impression, Sunrise (1872)
This is by far the most famous painting by Claude Monet. It is focused on a scene in the port of Le Havre, where Monet grew up. The most interesting part of the painting is the use of vibrant orange to depict light. What Monet shows is a high level of saturation contrast, especially when painting a warm light source. The painting is recognized as inspiring the name of the Impressionist movement.
Woman with a Parasol (1875)
Woman with a Parasol is a painting of Monet’s wife, Madame Monet, and their son, Jean Monet, when they were living in Argenteuil, capturing a scene on a walk on a windy summer morning. The painting gave the impression of a casual family trip rather than a formal painting. The parasol, the veil, and the dress of Madame Monet are symbols of status, despite the fact that the Monet family was not wealthy at the time.
Fellow French Impressionist artist Pierre August Renoir also painted a similar picture.
Beach in Pourville (1882)
Beach in Pourville is a painting of a deserted beach with cliffs on both ends. The water and sky make up almost two-thirds of the artwork. It explores the reflection of light in connection to color, and the concept of total perception is more significant than the reality it is meant to interpret. The vibrant fall colors and detailed composition in this beautiful landscape demonstrate the artist’s skill.
The Beach at Trouville (1870)
The Beach at Trouville is a famous painting by Claude Monet of visitors from the luxury Hotel des Roches Noires walking down the beachfront, as well as the impression of sunshine, reflected on land and ocean in Trouville, Normandy. Evolving impressionist technique and the sand particles in the paint indicates that it was painted outside. The flow of the glass-like water in the painting brings the painting’s intensity to life.
Snow at Argenteuil (1875)
This is a painting of the town of Argenteuil, on a street going towards the Seine, facing away from the railway station. It’s a big piece, with a lot of details sacrificed in favor of mood.
Its mostly monochromatic palette of blues and greys perfectly depicts the sadness of a drizzly winter afternoon. Snow at Argenteuil is one of the most famous paintings by Claude Monet containing snow, which he created a number of pictures of during his career, experimenting with the effects of light, with a focus on the white of snow and rising run, which created purple hues.
The Houses of Parliament, Sunset (1903)
This is a painting of the Palace of Westminster, the seat of the British Parliament, and was made during Monet’s visit to London in the early 1900s. It was one of his most comprehensive studies of the effects of light and color on architecture. His mark-making and vibrant color palettes prepared the path for 20th-century painting.
Luncheon on the Grass (1866)
This is a painting of a picnic with people in a calm and happy mood, in a style reminiscent of early impressionism. It was a huge impressionist work that defied traditional artistic rules and attempted to accomplish timelessness. The painting was rejected by the salon, which only displayed works that had been approved by the French Academy of Fine Arts.
There is another painting with the same English title which depicts a similar scene by fellow French painter Édouard Manet.
Rue Montorgueil (1878)
This is a painting of the festivity’s atmosphere, painted on June 30, 1878, for a government-sponsored celebration commemorating “peace and work.” With flags showing patriotism, colors contribute to the vibrancy of modern France and the moving crowd. This urban landscape is extremely busy with large crowds of people.
Woman with a Parasol, facing left (1886)
This painting is of Suzanne Hoschedé, Monet’s second wife, who appears on a riverside against a pale blue sky. The figure is well-balanced against the breathtaking scenery. In this way, it’s a unique painting: it’s neither a pure portrait nor a pure landscape. It’s a mixture of the two. Blues, greens, yellows, and a few red elements make up the painting’s Impressionist palette.
Eine Allee in Monets Garten in Giverny (1902)
This is a painting of rows of flowers under trees, permitting dappled light to vary the tone of their colors. A sight of Monet’s house is seen beyond the woods. He didn’t have to travel very far for ideas. The painting provides a good example of how we may make the most of the materials at our disposal, and that inspiration can be found as near the garden outside our front door.
The Doges Palace (1908)
This is a painting of the Venetian leader’s palace, which is bathed in a pleasant light and seen from a boat parked in the lagoon. Dappled brushstrokes in a vibrant palette of pinks, yellows, and blues were used to create the Impressionist painting. Monet painted The Doge’s Palace from several views during a three-month stay in Venice from October to December 1908.
Water Lily Pond (1917 – Art Institute of Chicago)
The series of Water Lilys created late in his career has become some of the most famous paintings by Claude Monet. This is a painting of the lilies that are mixed with reflections of other plants on the pool’s surface.
It is famous because of its unusual but lovely bright hues. The thought of seeing something plain appealed to a large portion of the population. It’s more than just water lilies reflecting on the pond’s water; it’s also a mirror of an artist’s life.
What famous paintings by Claude Monet do you think we should add to this list? Comment below.