Happy Birthday Monet!

To celebrate his birthday, here are some quick fun facts about Claude Monet:

• Claude Monet was born November 14, 1840 and died December 8, 1926
• He died at the age of 86, but if he was still alive today he would be 182 years old
• Monet came from a French working class family which was in contrast to many prominent painters during that time period
• He was an impressionist painter – a term given to the movement by art critic Louis Leroy when reviewing Monet’s “Impression, Sunrise” in the first exhibit of the movement in 1874
• The Impressionist movement sought to display the artist’s perception of a subject matter; artists worked en plein air and painted with small touches of paint to capture moments of color and light
• Monet’s wife Camille was the subject of several of his paintings
• Monet designed his own gardens at this home in Giverny and many of his masterpieces were inspired by this beautiful landscape
• He often times reused canvases and because of this many of his paintings may have unknown treasures hidden beneath
• Monet had severe cataracts which may have affected his paintings in later years
• In his last 30 years he painted about 250 oil paintings