Art to Be Simply Loved
November 15, 2019
A new, special exhibit has come to Colorado in the form of over 200 pieces of Claude Monet’s artwork. Oscar Claude Monet is famous for his foundership role in the impressionist art style. Born on November 14th, 1840, Monet began painting thanks to a man named Eugene Boudin a local artist in his hometown of La Havre, France. Boudin believed that Claude would find his passion in landscape art, and Claude flourished in that area. This was evident from the numerous nature landscapes he painted, excluding the portraits he would later create.
One portrait Claude made renown was of his soon to be first wife, Camille Doncieux in 1866 titled, “The Woman in the Green Dress”. The majority of Monet’s art pieces were landscapes that he would happen across while traveling, and the scenery around his land. Claude married Camille Doncieux in 1870 and had two boys with her, Jean and Michel Monet. In 1879, Camille’s health had a rapid decline due to tuberculosis and she was bedridden in her final days. A grief stricken Claude decided to memorialize his love in a painting aptly titled, “Camille Monet on her Deathbed’. This had thrown Claude into a depression from which he did not surface for seven months. After, however, he went on campaigns to paint collections of landscapes and seascapes to document the French countryside. These collections became known as some of his best works.
In 1878, Claude had been commissioned to make art panels in a house owned by an art collector named Ernest Horschede. Horschede along with his wife, Alice, and their six children, were fans of Claude’s work. After a stint of time Ernest was forced into bankruptcy, essentially abandoning his family and Claude in the house. This allowed Monet the opportunity to grow closer to Alice and eventually he proposed. She refused, wanting to wait for Ernest to be out of her life completely, which came in the form of his death in 1891. In 1883 Claude and Alice were married, living in a rented home in Giverny, France. By 1890, Monet had amassed enough wealth to buy a home, and by 1899 he had built a greenhouse and a second studio.
Beginning in the 1890s, Monet would paint in a series format, in which he would use the same subject in each painting under differing weather conditions and lights. During World War I, his son, Michel, served in the army along with his friend and admirer, Clemenceau, who led the French nation. Monet would paint weeping white willows in remembrance of the fallen french soldiers. By this time his second wife Alice had died in 1911 with Jean following in 1914. Thus leaving Alice’s daughter and Jean’s wife Blanche to take care of Claude.
Claude had developed nuclear cataracts in his later years this is shown through his painting that had a reddish tint due to his changed perception of color. Some of the paintings he revised, but left others untouched after his two cataract removal surgeries in 1923. Claude died of lung cancer on December 5th, 1926, and wished that his funeral be small. He was buried in Giverny, France with only fifty people in attendance, a small number in comparison to the masses of people he influenced with his work.
