The French painter Claude Monet was the main representative of French Impressionism. Already in his youth he met Eugène Boudin in 1857, who introduced him to open-air painting in the area around the bay of Le Havre. In 1862 Monet painted for two years in the studio of Charles Gleyre together with his fellow students Auguste Renoir, Frédéric
Bazille and Alfred Sisley. Together they devoted themselves to intensive open-air studies in the forest of Fontainebleau. The main motif of the artists was the landscape with its visible reality, literary or mythological themes were vehemently rejected by them.
In 1870/1871 Monet lived in London during the German-French War. Here he was particularly impressed and influenced by the English landscape painters William Turner and John Constable. Returning to France, Monet lived in Argenteuil on the Seine. This river served him and his friends Gustave Caillebotte and Edouard Manet again and again as inspiration.
1874 Claude Monet organized the first of a total of eight group exhibitions as an "anti-academic" protest against the prevailing art policy of the "Salon". Monet and his fellow painters Edgar Degas, Camille Pissarro and Auguste Renoir were violently attacked by the art public.
The essential features of Impressionism and its main representative Monet were the reproduction of the play of colors and the vibration of light. In his paintings, colored shadows were created by the constant change of sunlight as well as colored light reflections in the foliage of the trees and on water surfaces. Monet's brushstrokes seemed fast, light and sketchy, as if thrown away. From 1883 Monet lived in Giverny Where his well-known water lily paintings were created in his garden. The water lilies became his main motif in Monet's late work from about 1904.
