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.

At sixteen, after the death of his mother, Monet lived with an aunt in Paris. There he attended art school and became involved with a circle of artist friends—Édouard Manet, Auguste Renoir, and Alfred Sisley among them—who would form the core of a new movement. In the group’s first formal exhibition in 1874, Monet’s painting of a misty dawn gave rise to the movement’s name. As Monet put it:



During his formative years as an artist in the latter half of the nineteenth century, Monet synthesized influences ranging from Boudin and the Barbizon school to the experimental paintings of Manet, ultimately creating an innovative style distinctively his own, a prelude to twentieth-century modernism.

Images

1. The Beach at Trouville, 1870
2. The Red Kerchief, c. 1868–1873
3. The Pont Neuf, 1871
4. Houses on the Bank of the River Zaan, 1871/1872
5. Still Life with Flowers and Fruit, 1869
6. Argenteuil, c. 1872
7. The Cradle – Camille with the Artist’s Son Jean, 1867
8. Interior, after Dinner, 1868/1869
9. Sailboats on the Seine at Petit-Gennevilliers, 1874
10. Camille on the Beach in Trouville, 1870
11. Apple Trees in Blossom, 1872
12. La Pointe de la Hève at Low Tide, 1865
13. The Basin of Argenteuil, c. 1872
14. Farmyard in Normandy, c. 1863
15. Regatta at Argenteuil, c. 1872
16. Luncheon on the Grass, center panel, 1865–1866
17. The Magpie, 1868–1869
18. On the Beach at Trouville, 1870–1871
19. Luncheon on the Grass, left panel, 1865–1866
20. Meditation (Madame Monet on the Sofa), c. 1871
21. Still Life with Melon, c. 1872
22. The Bridge at Bougival, 1869
23. On the Bank of the Seine, Bennecourt, 1868
24. View near Rouelles, 1858
25. The Landing Stage, 1871
26. The Artist’s Son, 1868
27. Springtime, c. 1872
28. Seascape, Storm, 1866