Claude Monet

Claude Monet research papers are custom written and can focus on only Monet or both Monet and any contemporary impressionistic artists during the mid 1800's.

The transformation of Paris from an encumbered city to a cosmopolitan renovated hub of extraordinary lines and structures in the mid 1800s marks the emergence of an artistic period classified as impressionism. This form of painting was largely developed in France at the end of the nineteenth century as a reaction against the traditionalism and romanticism that had up to this point dominated the artistic arena. Several artists lay claim to the impressionistic period such as the following:

• Morrisot
• Renoir
• Manet
• Degas
• Claude Monet

Central to the sweeping movement in art now known as impressionism was the artist Claude Monet. It can be said that Monet instilled a style of painting that captured the simplest form of visual expression, and that was the glance. Monet's own words describe the essence of impressionistic painting, " 'When you go out to paint, try to forget what objects you have before you, a tree, a house, a field or whatever,' Monet explained to an American neighbor in Giverny, 'Merely think here is a little square of blue, an oblong of pink, here a streak of yellow, and paint it just as it looks to you, the exact color, shape, until it gives you your own naïve impression of the scene before you.'"

Claude Monet began his career as an artist in 1864, at which time he pursued his first full season of painting. He chose to work at several varying spots along the coast in Normandy, France where he grew up. His first exhibition of paintings occurred the following year at the annual Salon exhibition in Paris. Two paintings of seascapes rendered from his time along the coastal beaches of Normandy were accepted and received warmly by the critics. In an interesting note, some critics credited Monet's two works to that of an already established artist, Edouard Manet, whose own exhibited work, Olympia, was dismissed by the critics. Monet's first exhibited works however did not probe the intellect or derive from historical content as traditionally paintings had thus far. They were merely soothing works of a popular category, seascapes.

It was in school that Monet developed his flair for artistry gaining a reputation as a caricaturist by the age of sixteen. This caught the attention of a Eugene Boudin, slightly older than Monet, who persuaded Monet to try his hand at landscape painting. Finally giving in and accompanying Boudin on an excursion to paint the countryside around Le Havre, Monet found his calling as an artist. Monet would later recall the experience, "It was as if a veil had been torn suddenly away; I had understood, I had grasped what painting could be."