Claude Monet

A French painter and founder of French Impressionist painting. A prolific practitioner of the movement’s philosophy of expressing one’s perceptions before nature. The term “Impressionism” is from the title of his painting Impression, soleil levant (Impression, Sunrise; first exhibited in 1874.

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During the Franco-Prussian war Monet and his family fled France. He ended up in the Netherlands where he came under police scrutiny for “revolutionary activities.” He returned to France later that year.

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Everyone discusses my art and pretends to understand as if it were necessary to understand when it is simply necessary to love.

I have never had a studio, and I do not understand shutting oneself up in a room. To draw, yes; to paint, no.