Summary of all I found out about Monet by Maia F.
Claude Monet was born in Paris on the 14th of November in 1840, but his parents moved to Le Havre in 1845, where Monet grew up. Monet had a talent for drawing but hated school. He wanted to study painting but his father, a grocer, wanted his son to follow in his footsteps.
Eventually Monet got his wish and left to study art in Paris. He didn’t like art school anymore than he had liked his previous school, finding it old fashioned, but he did meet other young painters who, like him, preferred to paint outside.
When Monet first started selling his paintings they weren’t very popular and he often struggled to feed his young family. He considered drowning himself around the same time his first son was born in 1867. Monet often painted his family, usually outside.
Eventually Monet managed to earn enough money to buy a small house for his family, but they had to flee to England when war broke out between France and Prussia (now part of Germany) in 1870-1871.
Monet returned to Paris after the war, but still struggled to exhibit his paintings. Eventually he and the other young Impressionists decided to hold their own exhibition. Most people still considered his work to be too new, one critic describing his painting Impressions, sunrise, as just impressions and not real painting. It was from this that the Impressionist movement got its name.
Monet found a good friend in Ernest Hoschedé and when Ernest went bankrupt Monet invited Ernest’s family to live with him.
When Monet’s wife, Camille, died shortly after the birth of their second son, Monet threw himself into his painting while Ernest’s wife Alice looked after both families’ children.
Monet, now much more successful,bought a house at Giverny and began to create his garden, which features in most of his later paintings. Part of this garden was his lily pond, and the paintings he made of this are some of his most famous.
Monet developed severe cataracts in his old age and when he had them removed he was horrified by his paintings, which he thought looked dreadful. He even tried to destroy some of them. Monet died on 5th December 1926, aged 86.