Blog Assignment #15/Monet.

Assignment #15: Claude Monet
          Claude Monet was born on 14 November 1840. He was the second son of Claude Adolphe Monet and Louise Justine Aubrée Monet. One interesting fact I learned is that his father wanted him to go into the family grocery business, but Monet wanted to become an artist. His mother was a singer. On 1 April 1851, Monet entered Le Havre secondary school of the arts. In 1845 the family moved to Le Havre, France, where Monet's father and uncle ran a business selling supplies for ship. Through an exhibition of his drawings at a local frame shop in 1858, Monet met Eugène Boudin, a landscape painter who became a great influence on the young artist.
           By 1859 Monet was determined to pursue an artistic career. Monet was in Paris for several years and met other young painters who would become friends. By the time his was sixteen, in 1856, most of the traits that were to make Monet a great painter were evident. He was not religious and had little faith in anything that was not drawn from direct experience. It was at this time that Monet found his first mentor in a local painter, Louis Eugene Boudin. Monet later confessed that the first time he had seen Boudin's nature studies displayed in the same shop window as his own caricature portraits, "His painting inspired me with an intense aversion and, without knowing the man, I hated him."

             In 1859, at the age of 19, Monet went to Paris. From 1860 to 1862, Monet was called up for military service and chose to serve in Algeria because he was attracted to the sky. The southern light and color he experienced in Africa excited him and remained an inspiration throughout his life. After he was sent home on sick leave, his sympathetic aunt bought a substitute to complete the remaining five years of his service for him. In 1867, Monet was in acute financial difficulties. His friend Bazille bought Women in the Garden, an enormously challenging piece painted entirely out-of-doors. So that Monet would have an income, Bazille arranged to pay for it in installments over four years. So as you can see nothing stopped this man from doing what he loved, and that's why he is remembered today.