Monet: The Early Years Book of Postcards

While still in his teens, Claude Monet (French, 1840–1926) was selling his charcoal sketches and caricatures to friends and neighbors in Le Havre, France. His excellent draftsmanship drew the attention of resident landscape painter Eugène Boudin, who befriended the young artist and encouraged him to try then-unconventional plein air oil painting. Monet was profoundly affected by its immediacy, and thus began his lifelong fascination with light, color, and capturing on canvas the fleeting sensory perception of nature. In Paris, Monet became involved with a circle of artist friends, who would form the core of a new movement. In their first formal exhibition in 1874, Monet’s painting of a misty dawn gave rise to the movement’s name: Impressionism.

The 28 artworks reproduced in this book of postcards trace Monet’s early years, in which he ultimately create an innovative style distinctively his own, which was a prelude to 20th-century modernism.