In 1872 (or 1873) Monet painted Impression, soleil levant (French: Impression, sunrise - now in the Musée Marmottan, Paris), a landscape of Le Havre, which was hung in the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874. It is said that a hostile critic Louis Leroy used the name "Impressionists" from the title of this picture by commenting that their paints were indeed "impressions" rather than finished works of art. By the third exhibition in 1876 the painters we know as the Impressionists were using the term about themselves.
He married Alice Hoschede in 1892, whom he had an affair with while he was married to Camille.
In the 1880s and 1890s Monet painted a series of paintings of the Rouen Cathedral from different points of view and at different times of the day. Twenty views of the cathedral were exhibited at the Durand-Ruel gallery in 1895. He also made series-paintings of haystacks.
Monet was exceptionally fond of painting controlled nature - his own garden, his water lilies, his pond, and his bridge. His garden had a meadow with willows and a marsh. He also painted up and down the banks of the Seine. In 1914 Monet began a major new large series of the water lily scenes at the suggestion of his friend, the politician Georges Clemenceau.
He is interred in the Giverny Church Cemetery, Giverny, Eure, in the Haute-Normandie, Region of France.
Recent sales of a Monet painting exceeded US$22 million |
