Claude Monet’s Impressionism

BlouinArtInfo
Jul 27, 2017 · 2 min read

Impressionism is a 19th century visual art movement that emerged in France by a band of artists who parted ways with conventional practices that were prevalent in paintings of their times. The movement originated with a group of Paris-based artists who achieved distinction by organising exhibitions independently during the 1870s and 1880s.

Oscar-Claude Monet is considered as one of the founders of the French Impressionist art movement in the 1870s. He was a prolific and consistent practitioner of the movement’s philosophies visualizing his perception of nature with his expertise of plein air landscape paintings.

Monet, along with his family, had fled to London due to the outbreak of Franco-Prussian war in 1870. He returned after the war in 1872 and settled in Argenteuil, a town west of Paris, and worked on developing his own technique and painted some of his best-known works. When he once visited Louvre, Monet witnessed painters copying from old masters but he preferred to paint that he saw sitting by a window instead.

Artworks by Monet and other artists of similar taste were rejected in 1860s, by the conservative Académie des Beaux-Arts, which held an exhibition at the Salon de Paris annually. In 1873, Monet banded together with several artists to form the ‘Société Anonyme des Artistes, Peintres, Sculpteurs, Graveurs’ (Anonymous Society of Painters, Sculptors, and Engravers), as an alternative to the Salon and exhibit their artworks independently.

The independent artists had diverse approaches to painting, but were viewed by contemporaries as belonging to a flock and critiqued their work for wearing a sketch-like and unfinished appearance, though some praised it for its depiction of modern life.

Monet painted ‘Impression, Sunrise’ in 1872, depicting the landscape of Le Havre port. From the painting’s title, the art critic Louis Leroy, satirically coined the term “Impressionism”. Though it was said with the intent of belittlement, the Impressionists welcomed his remark and wore the term for themselves. They held their first Impressionist exhibition in 1874, not to promote a new style, but to liberate themselves from Salon de Paris’s restraint. The entry fee was set at 60 francs and the artists got to display their works of expertise, without the hindrance of a jury; an estimated 3500 people showed up at the exhibition. Some works did sell even though exhibitors placed their prices too high.

Monet had attained critical and financial success after 1880s but still suffered from bouts of self-doubt and depression and destroyed about 500 paintings by burning, cutting or kicking the artworks. He also expressed to his friend in his last years, his desire to destroy all his paintings before he died. Monet died of lung cancer on 5th December 1926. Monet’s belongings were entrusted to French Academy of Fine Arts by his son, Michael, in 1966. Monet’s artworks can be viewed on BlouinArtinfo.com and Artsy.net.

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