Women In The Garden 1866 By Claude Monet

Claude Monet was the most consistent and prolific practitioner of Impressionism and the philosophy of expressing one's perceptions before nature. He was among the leaders of the French Impressionist movement of the 1870s and 1880s.

In 1866, Claude Monet started working with a large painting in the garden of the property he was renting in the Paris suburbs. Using his future wife, nineteen-year-old Camille Doncieux, as his sole model, his ambitiously large Women in the Garden (1866-67) was a culmination of the ideas and themes in his earlier work.

Monet was hopeful that the work would be included in the Paris Salon, but the painting was refused by the jury of the 1867 Salon which, apart from the lack of subject and narrative, deplored the visible brushstrokes which it regarded as a sign of carelessness and incompleteness. One of the juries said that too many people think of nothing but continuing in abominable direction but later representatives of the French government had agreed to pay the incredible price of 200,000 francs for it.

In January 1867, his friend Bazille bought Monet work for the prize of 2,500 francs in order to help Monet out of the extreme debt that forced him to slash over 200 canvases to avoid them being taken by his creditors.
Women In The Garden 1866 By Claude Monet

Claude Monet

Claude Monet
Born in 1840, Claude Monet lived all his life along the River Seine. He always preferred to paint outdoors and is often described as the father of Impressionism.

Second only to his passion for painting was his love of nature and gardening; he once paid a woodcutter to spare a row of trees he was painting.

In 1883, while still very poor Monet rented the green and pink house at Giverny which became a beautiful home for his extended family.

Over the years his fame increased and he became very rich indeed eventually buying his house and employing gardeners to help create the water gardens, the subject of much of his later work.

Monet was immensely disciplined, usually rising at 4 a.m and always insisting that the house ran like clockwork.

He set equally high standard for his work: on one occasion a gardener was ordered to burn several paintings which Monet considered unsuccessful; on another, Monet threw his canvas, easel and brushes into the water.

During the First World War, fighting went on so near Monet’s house that he could hear the guns, but although his son was skilled in action, Monet refused to leaved his garden.

Monet died in Giverny on December 5, 1926.
Claude Monet