Oscar-Claude Monet; 14 November
1840 – 5 December 1926) was a French painter, a
founder of French Impressionist painting and the
most consistent and prolific practitioner of the
movement's philosophy of expressing one's
perceptions before nature, especially as applied to
‘’plein air’’ landscape painting. The term
"Impressionism" is derived from the title of his
painting Impression, ‘’soleil levant’’ (Impression,
Sunrise), which was exhibited in 1874 in the first
of the independent exhibitions mounted by Monet and
his associates as an alternative to the Salon de
Paris.
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Monet's ambition of documenting the French
countryside led him to adopt a method of painting
the same scene many times in order to capture the
changing of light and the passing of the seasons.
From 1883, Monet lived in Giverny, where he
purchased a house and property and began a vast
landscaping project which included lily ponds that
would become the subjects of his best-known works.
In 1899, he began painting the water lilies, first
in vertical views with a Japanese bridge as a
central feature and later in the series of
large-scale paintings that was to occupy him
continuously for the next 20 years of his life.
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