Claude Monet’s Early Life

Claude Monet was born on November 15, 1840 in Paris, but his family moved to the port city of Le Havre, France while he was still young.

He loved to draw as a child. He began drawing caricatures of people that were quite good. Even as a kid he was able to make some

extra money drawing pictures of people. Around the age of eleven, Claude entered a

school for the arts. His mother supported his becoming an artist, but his father wanted

him to take over the family grocery business. Claude met some other artists around this

time and began to use oil paints to paint the outdoors. Moving to Paris A few years after his mother died in 1857, Claude moved to Paris to study art at the Academie Suisse.

Impressionism

Monet is known as one of the founders of the Impressionistmovement, along with the other artists experimenting with painting styles at that time.

In fact, the name, Impressionist, comes from a painting Monet exhibited called Impression, Sunrise.

Changing LightMonet often painted the same scene many times, to capture the changing light and seasons.

Look at the pictures of the haystack paintings

How does the changing light affect the feel of the paintings?

While we are looking at Claude Monet’s pictures I want you to think….

I can see,I feel, I think,I wonder

Weeping Willow

Monet painted this in honour of all the fallen soldiers in World War I.

Woman With An Umbrella

“I'm working like never and at new attempts, figures in the open air as I understand them, made like landscapes. It is an old dream that still worries me and that I want to fulfil once and for all; but it is hard !”

Claude Monet

Water Lilies and Japanese Bridge

Monet moved to Giverny in France, and he spent many hours painting the water lilies and the bridge in a series of huge paintings. Paintings of the water lilies are displayed in a purpose built, curved room at Muséede l’Orangerie, Paris.

Monday 8th March 2021

WALT: Describe how a picture by Claude Monet makes us feel.

I feel…

I think…

I wonder…

I can see…