Monet

Introduction

We are María and Haizea and we are from San Sebastian. We go to Saint Patrick's English school (the best school) and here it is where we have done this project.

MONET

Table of years and pictures

1867	1872	1874	1875	1894
Garden at Sainte-Adresse	Impression : Soleil Levant	The Highway Bridge at Argenteuil	La Promenade	Rouen Cathedral: Full Sunlight
The Beach at Sainte-Adresse	Regatta at Argenteuil	The bridge at Argenteuil	La femme au Metier	Rouen Cathedral, the West Portal, Dull Weather

Monet

His Life

Welcome to explore Monet’s world. This site has been designed to give visitors of all ages additional sense into Monet’s art and life in the 20^th century. We have in the event this fun-file, informational web site in association with our recent sponsorship of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, exhibition Monet in the20^thCentury.

Claude Monet was born on November 14, 1840 in Paris, France. He started drawing and painting at a young age and is now one of the best known artists in history. Monet was a leader of the Impressionists, a group of radical artists that included Auguste Renoir, Paul Cézanne, Camille Pissarro, Edgar Degas, Berthe Morisot, and Alfred Sisley.

Explore our MonetLondon, Venice ´s work and you will see and Giverny where Monet painted some of his most famous masterpieces in the last 26 years of his life. The first of these excursions was in 1899 when he spent six weeks from September to October at the luxurious Savoy Hotel. This new hotel possessed all the latest modern conveniences of the timeelectric lights, and a , including an elevator, telephone servicerooms with river . Best of all, the hotel had viewssuite , which allowed Monet to set up his easel in his overlooking the Thames. He painted Waterloo Bridge to his left and Charing Cross Bridge, a railroad bridge, to his right. In returned for two months to work on the same 1900, he style and began painting the Houses of Parliament. In 1901, he came back to London for another two months. This would be the last time he painted in London.

During these three trips, Monet did about 100 "Londons" as he called them which included 41 paintings of Waterloo Bridge, 34 of Charing Cross Bridge and 19 of the Houses of Parliament (which he painted from a balcony at the nearby St. Thomas Hospital). He worked on as many as 15 views at a time. Monet didn’t finish these paintings in London. Instead, he brought them home to France, where he completed them in his studio.

In 1904, he showed 37 canvas from this series at the Durand-Ruel Gallery in Paris. His most successful show to date. He worked on some of his London paintings for another year because he had wanted to show them in the English capital, but the exhibition never occurred.
On September 30, 1908, Monet and his second Wife, Alice, travelled by train to Italy, to spend few weeks in Venice. They stayed as guests of friends at the spectacular palace Palazzo Barbaro. Monet painted scenes of the Grand Canal from there.

Attracted by the city’s beauty and appeal, Monet and Alice decided to extend their stay. They moved into the Grand Hotel Britannia for seven weeks. This hotel offered Monet spectacular views of the Grand Canal to paint. He began eight paintings of the Island of San Giorgio Maggiore and its monastery of the same name. On occasion he took a water taxi out to this island, from where he looked back to paint the Doges' Palace. The Doges' Palace is a beautiful example of the14th century Gothic architecture. At one time this building (the residence of Doge, or duke, of Venice) was the Republic’s seat of government and symbol of its fortune and power. Monet also painted the Doges' Palace at closer range from a rented gondola that he used as a floating studio. Monet had expected to return to Venice the following year, but circumstances kept him at Giverny. He was plagued with headaches and eye problems, later diagnosed as cataracts; and he needed to prepare for an important exhibition of paintings of his water gardens. He also had to combat with a serious flood that submerged his gardens and caused extensive damage. To add to his difficulties, Monet’s wife was diagnosed in 1910 with leukemia from which she died in 1911. Monet didn’t work again on his Venice paintings until after Alice’s death. He exhibited twenty-nine of his Venetian views in 1912 at the Bernheim-Jeune Gallery in Paris.

Monet

His life in Giverny

At the beginning of the 20th century, Claude Monet had just turned 60. He lived in Giverny a rural farming community on the River Seine, 40 miles Northwest of Paris. Monet had moved to Giverny and was able to buy his property seven years later in 1890 when he began to receive wider recognition and enjoy greater financial security. In 1893 he bought a close parcel of land that contained a small pond. Over the years he tripled the size of the pond. He filled it with plants, including water lilies, and built a Japanese bridge on its western end. Together with Alice and their combined families, he lived in a stucco house, surrounded by spectacular flower gardens of his own design.

After completion of large-scale restoration work, Claude Monet's property in Giverny, left by his son to the "Académie des Beaux-Arts" in 1966, has become the Claude Monet Foundation, inaugurated in 1980.

The house, with its pink roughcast façade, where the leader of the Impressionist School lived from 1883 to 1926, once again has the colourful decor and intimate attractiveness of former times. The precious collection of Japanese engravings is shown in several rooms, as the master of Giverny himself had chosen to. The huge Nympheas studio, a stone's throw from the house, has also been restored. It houses the Foundation's Shop.

The gardens have been replanted as they once were and offer for the admiration of visitors the "painting from nature" which Claude Monet's contemporaries considered one of his masterpieces.

The rectangular Clos Normand, with archways of climbing plants entwined around brilliantly coloured bushes, lies before the house and studios, offering from Spring to Autumn the palette of varying colours of the painter-gardener who was "rapt about flowers".

Lastly, the Water Garden, formed by a tributary of the Epte, lies further away, shaded by weeping willows. With its famous Japanese Bridge, its wistarias, azaleas and its pond, it has once more become that setting of sky and water, which inspired the pictorial universe of the water lilies.

When Claude Monet came to Giverny, the hotel Baudy didn't exist as such. The small "epicerie - buvette" owned by Angelina and Gaston Baudy offered nothing but a simple meal. There were no rooms available to welcome travellers; in any case, who would want to sleep in this little village? In the spring of 1886, all this changed. The American painter William Metcalf arrived at Vernon station and came to Giverny by way of a little train that, at the time, passed through all the villages from Vernon to Gisors. The norman countryside offered the young artist a magnificent spectacle of blossoming apple orchards and rolling hills. Metcalf regretted that he had left his paints behind. As noon approached, he happened upon a large window with a brick façade: the "buvette" of Madame Baudy. She later admitted that during the first meeting she was afraid of this strong hairy with strange manners who expressed himself in an incomprehensible "gibberish". None the less, she consented to serve him lunch, however, early showed him the door the moment he requested a room.

However the inhospitality, Metcalf would return; the spring charm of Normandy is irresistible... Fifteen days later, our American artist found himself, once again, on the doorstep of the "buvette" Baudy, this time accompanied by two friends, each with an easel under his arm.
Madame Baudy recognised her strange visitor. With a quick look at his material, she understood that her "vagabond", who had made such a strong impression on her during his first visit, was actually an artist painter. After all, didn't the neighbour, Claude Monet, carry on in a similar way, lugging about the same equipment? Angelina admitted her mistake and early apologized.
This time when Metcalf inquired about a room, she and Gaston gave up their own bed for the night. The three young artists discovered this way that Monet, the master of Impressionism, lived only a stone throw away. The young artists were elated to found chance, what represented to them the avant-garde of painting. They went to present themselves to Claude Monet who received them graciously and invited them to his diner table.

When they returned to the Julian Academy in Paris, their tongues were loosed. They couldn't stop saying good things about Giverny: "Monet lives in Giverny, a superb little village... There is an inn there where one can eat and sleep for only four cents..." The stamped began the following week. A joyous crowd of eccentric artists scrambled off the train and hurried to the buvette Baudy. Angelina found herself impressed, she hurried to add more tables to accommodate her new clientele. That night she logged the visitors in the neighbouring houses.
The following months saw an increasing bustle in Giverny, with the hotel Baudy at its center. As business picked up the Baudys decided to build the hotel Baudy, as we know it. In 1887 the first studio in Giverny was erected in the garden. At the same time, the main building expanded to make room for 20 bedrooms, a dining room and two supplementary studios. The Baudys constructed a second building that housed three bedrooms and a billard room. In 1891, Gaston and Angelina held a house warming party for their blossoming establishment.

This lively movement quickly turned into a rompus. The old storehouse was transformed into a ballroom where, every weekend, one could hear resounding bagpipes and banjos, in harmony with the echo of the piano giving a concert of its own in the dining room.
The inhabitants of the hotel Baudy drank a lot, danced and talked deep into the night. However their defects, they managed to work hard as well, the white parasols and easels that constantly dotted the Giverny countryside were testimony to their industriousness.
The establishment became manager of the Lefevre and Foinet Company, who, in making art supplies, canvases and fine colours, reinforced the hotel Baudy's role as an artistic center.
>From then on, the establishment was never empty. Those who lived nearby named it "the hotel of the American painters". The construction of a tennis court across from the buvette gave the place anglosaxon not very strong images.

Giverny

Life in the hotel Baudy

The studio

In 1887, due to the insistance of the artists-lodgers, the Baudys consented to build a studio in the garden. The modest room (see photo above) was supplied with disparate art materials left, for the most part, by former tenants. Ce location allowed for all the normal studio work, and above all, nude studies. The models usually Parisians.

In 1891 two other studios were built in the attic of the main building. The greater part of American painters used these premises. Cézanne occupied the studios for about one month.

The vegetable garden

At the end of the last century the inns on the countryside used to live by subsistence farming. Mass retail didn't exist, the most of what one ate was produced in one's own garden. Gaston Baudy maintained a big kitchen-garden facing his establishment, on the opposite side of the road. The vegetable garden was planted with fruit trees and vines. The neighbouring farm bred poultry and cattle as well as pigs. Several paintings depict this vegetable garden and the farm.

The dining room

The hotel Baudy began with only two tables, on which Angelina set places according to the arrival of her customers. This set up was without risks, as artists are known as people who speak their mind.
Due to the insistence of the American clientele, Angelina Baudy imported five brands of whisky. This drink was practically unknown in France at the time, however, by the end of the 19th century, it found itself among the "exotic" products available at the hotel Baudy. Tea had been available for several months already, along with maple syrup, porridge and corn flakes. The traditional cuisine served at the hotel Baudy felt the foreign influence. It wasn't uncommon to see typical Norman dishes accompanied by American-style backed beans.

The garden and the roses

During the 19th century vineyards were to be found everywhere on the hillsides of Giverny. Multiple little walls ran through the Giverny countryside, assuring stability and facilitating the maintenance of the small plots. Towards the end of the century these cultivations were abandoned after an epidemic of phyloxera that destroyed the french vines.
Baudys used the terraces of the hill to plant a flower garden with simple, perfumed roses and rustic perennials. These installed themselves under the roses while vines roses began snaking their way up the tree trunks. Small clearings in the abundant garden permitted artists to sit down to paint, or simply to daydream, in this ocean of roses in bloom in May-June

Today the whole garden has retained this amusing enthusiasm where bent paths guarded by daisies and hypericum cross stone steps that lead one right up to the top of the hill. The numerous varieties of ancient rose bushes, sometimes bent under the weight of their petals, bring to mind the haunting image of ladies in crinolines standing here a century ago, relaxing in the splendour of the blossoms.