French Impressionist Painter, 1840-1926 Claude Oscar Monet (14 November 1840 C 5 December 1926) was 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. Claude Monet was born on 14 November 1840 on the fifth floor of 45 rue Laffitte, in the ninth arrondissement of Paris . He was the second son of Claude-Adolphe and Louise-Justine Aubree Monet, both of them second-generation Parisians. On 20 May 1841, he was baptised into the local church parish, Notre-Dame-de-Lorette as Oscar-Claude. In 1845, his family moved to Le Havre in Normandy. His father wanted him to go into the family grocery store business, but Claude Monet wanted to become an artist. His mother was a singer. On the first of April 1851, Monet entered the Le Havre secondary school of the arts. He first became known locally for his charcoal caricatures, which he would sell for ten to twenty francs. Monet also undertook his first drawing lessons from Jacques-François Ochard, a former student of Jacques-Louis David. On the beaches of Normandy in about 1856/1857 he met fellow artist Eugene Boudin who became his mentor and taught him to use oil paints. Boudin taught Monet "en plein air" (outdoor) techniques for painting. On 28 January 1857 his mother died. He was 16 years old when he left school, and went to live with his widowed childless aunt, Marie-Jeanne Lecadre. After several difficult months following the death of Camille on 5 September 1879, a grief-stricken Monet (resolving never to be mired in poverty again) began in earnest to create some of his best paintings of the 19th century. During the early 1880s Monet painted several groups of landscapes and seascapes in what he considered to be campaigns to document the French countryside. His extensive campaigns evolved into his series' paintings. Camille Monet had become ill with tuberculosis in 1876. Pregnant with her second child she gave birth to Michel Monet in March 1878. In 1878 the Monets temporarily moved into the home of Ernest Hosched, (1837-1891), a wealthy department store owner and patron of the arts. Both families then shared a house in Vetheuil during the summer. After her husband (Ernest Hoschede) became bankrupt, and left in 1878 for Belgium, in September 1879, and while Monet continued to live in the house in Vetheuil; Alice Hosched helped Monet to raise his two sons, Jean and Michel, by taking them to Paris to live alongside her own six children. They were Blanche, Germaine, Suzanne, Marthe, Jean-Pierre, and Jacques. In the spring of 1880 Alice Hosched and all the children left Paris and rejoined Monet still living in the house in Vetheuil. In 1881 all of them moved to Poissy which Monet hated. From the doorway of the little train between Vernon and Gasny he discovered Giverny. In April 1883 they moved to Vernon, then to a house in Giverny, Eure, in Upper Normandy, where he planted a large garden where he painted for much of the rest of his life. Following the death of her estranged husband, Alice Hosched married Claude Monet in 1892.   Related Paintings of Claude Monet :. | The Rocks near Pourville at Ebb Tide | The Church at Varengville,Morning Effect | Water Lilies | Nympheas | Train in the Country |
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Isaac Israels
Dutch, 1865-1934 Son of Jozef Israëls. He was largely self-taught, showing precocious talent and attending the Academie in The Hague in 1878-80. His first paintings date from 1880-84 and include a self-portrait, portraits of women and military subjects such as Bugle Practice. They were composed in the studio in a precise style, soft grey and brown tones predominating, showing the influence of the Hague school. In 1887 Israels moved to Amsterdam, where he was at the centre of the Tachtigers of writers and painters. Among his friends were George Hendrik Breitner, Lodewijk van Dyssel, Frans Erens, Max Liebermann, Jan Pieter Veth and Jan Voerman. In Amsterdam, after a brief and abortive period at the Rijksacademie, he sought a more fluent technique with which to record contemporary life. His drawings and watercolours are predominantly of cafes, cabarets, dance halls and the street life of Amsterdam. In 1889 he visited Paris, where he met St phane Mallarm, Berthe Morisot, Odilon Redon and Emile Zola. In 1894 he painted Three Servant Girls, the first of his plein-air pictures. From then on he applied transparent colours to capture the fleeting effects of light in oil, watercolour and pastel. His oils were painted in flat broad strokes. For the rest of his life he employed his very personal Impressionist style, which emphasized the interplay of light, colour, line and movement. His favourite subjects were beach, street and park scenes
James Baker Pyne
English Painter, 1800-1870 He was articled to a Bristol attorney, but around 1821 he took up painting and exhibited at the Bristol Gallery of Arts in 1824. Apparently self-taught, he worked closely with the Bristol artist Samuel Jackson (1794-1869) for a time and was influenced by the poetic landscapes of Francis Danby. In 1835 he moved to London and exhibited at the Royal Academy the following year. He showed seven pictures there altogether, but he also exhibited at the British Institution and showed 206 works at the Society of British Artists. Although technically accomplished, Pyne's work is curiously lacking in distinction. He imitated many artists but never found a style of his own. His early views of Bristol are among his best work, a good example being View of the Avon from Durdham Down (1829; Bristol, Mus. & A.G.). He also painted some lively coast scenes such as Whitby (Leicester, Mus. & A.G.). He was less successful when emulating J. M. W. Turner.
Franck Dillon
British 1823-1909