Claude Monet was born in Paris in 1840. He received drawing instruction at the Collège Communal in Le Havre. Around 1856 he was introduced to plein-air painting by Eugène Boudin. Monet moved to Paris in 1859 and began to study at the Académie Suisse a year later. There he met Camille Pissarro. From 1861 to 1862 he served in the military in Algeria. After the war Monet returned to Paris and came to know Gustave Courbet. He entered the atelier of Charles Gleyers, where Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley and Fréderic Bazille were also studying. In 1866 he became acquainted with Édouard Manet. Monet worked in Normandy and in the Forest of Fontainebleau. He first exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1865. In 1870 Monet moved to London. Later, after the Franco-Prussian War, he returned to Argenteuil in France by way of the Netherlands. Beginning in 1874 he participated in the first four Impressionist exhibitions, as well as the seventh. In 1878 he moved to Vétheuil, and three years later to Giverny. He then made several trips to the Netherlands, Italy and London, and later to Spain, Norway and Venice. In 1889 he was represented at the World’s Fair in the Exposition centennale de l’art français. He created his water garden in Giverny in 1893, and in 1922 he bequeathed his Water Lilies to the French state. Monet died in Giverny in 1926.
