Laura Junger
Claude Monet
Born 1840 in Paris
Died 1926 in Giverny
The painting of Monet is the very epitome of French Impressionism. His late work with its abstracted water lilies foreshadows the modern art of the 20th century.
David von Becker
Monet grew up in Le Havre. There he met Boudin in 1858, who introduced him to plein air painting. In Paris he initially attended the Académie Suisse, and in 1862 continued his training with the history painter Charles Gleyre. Monet joined forces with some of Gleyre’s other pupils, included Frédéric Bazille, Renoir, and Sisley.
His early painting excursions took him to the Normandy coast, the Seine River, and the forest of Fontainebleau. In 1874, he helped organize the first Impressionist exhibition together with Pissarro, Renoir, and Sisley. In 1883, he visited the south of France for the first time along with Renoir. Monet’s late work is dominated by large-scale, abstract views of his water lily pond in Giverny, where he resided after 1883.
Monet in the collection
Claude Monet is represented with 39 works in the Hasso Plattner Collection, on view in the Museum Barberini as a permanent loan from the Hasso Plattner Foundation. With over 110 paintings of French Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, including masterpieces by Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Berthe Morisot, Gustave Caillebotte, and Paul Signac, the museum in Potsdam is one of the most important centers of Impressionist landscape painting in the world.
