Claude Monet

1840- Birth of Claude Monet in Paris on 14th November to a grocer.
1845 - His family moved to Le Havre where Claude gained a reputation for caricature.
1856-57- Met with Eugène Boudin in Le Havre, who introduced him to landscape painting outd oors.
1859- He studied in Paris at the Académie Suisse where he struck up a friendship with Pissarro.
1860/61- Military service in Algiers.
1862-64- He painted with Boudin and Jongkind during the summer and then, at the Charles Gleyre studio he met with, amongst other students, Bazille, Renoir and Sisley, with whom he went painting in the forest of Fontainebleau.
1865- He painted 'Déjeuner sur l'herbe'
1866- During the Fall of this year he joined Gustave Courbet on the Normandy coast, and was influenced by his realism. He painted 'La Terrasse à Sainte-Adresse' and 'Women in the Garden'.
1870- He married Camille Doncieux, mother of his son Jean born in 1867. He painted beaches at Trouville until the Autumn of this year when he fled to London to avoid the Franco-Prussian war. In London he met art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel, and in the winter of the same year he painted views of the Thames and London, visited the National Gallery and studied Turner in particular. He participated in the exhibition of the ‘The Society of French Artists’ organized by Durand-Ruel.
1871- Exhibited in the ‘International Exhibition of South Kensington Museum’ and in December of the same year he returned to France, settling in Argenteuil, where he decorated his house with Japanese fans reminiscent of Whistler’s place in Chelsea. He worked in the company of Manet and Renoir, often using a floating studio to paint the Seine, in a maturing Impressionist style.
1872/73- His most famous work ‘Impression, sunrise’ was painted at Le Havre in 1872. Took part in collective exhibitions of ‘The Society of French Artists’ in London, where Whistler’s works were also presented alongside his at the end of 1872, during the Summer of 1873 and the end of 1873.
1874- Presented ‘Impression, sunrise’ at the first exhibition of the ‘Société Anonyme’ where it became the keynote of the exhibition. When a critic used its title to mock the whole group of painters, they became known from then on as the 'Impressionists’, and Monet remained the driving force. His meeting with Mallarmé possibly dates from this year.
1876/78- Made the series of views of the Gare Saint-Lazare.
1878- In January he left Argenteuil for Paris in a state of bankruptcy and spent the end of the Summer in Vétheuil, a small village on the banks of the Seine to the north-west of Paris, with the family of his patron Ernest Hoschedé.
1879- Death of Camille, his wife on 5th September.
1882- Showed four canvasses at the Impressionists’ exhibition that was organized by Durand-Ruel at a King Street gallery in the Saint-James area of London.
1883- In April, with his moderate success he was able to move to Giverny, to the west of Paris, with Alice Hoschedé and her children. He participated with seven paintings at the Dowdeswell Gallery in London, in an Impressionists exhibition organized by Durand-Ruel.
1887- Traveled to London, his first trip since 1871, where he spent time with Whistler and declared he was enchanted by London and by Whistler. Exhibits along with Whistler at international exhibitions at the Georges Petit Gallery in Paris. He accepted in a letter to Whistler to present his work at the Royal Society of British Artists in London where four of his canvases were shown. In another letter dating from the same year, he expressed his wish to paint the fog on the Thames river.
1888- Monet presented Whistler to Stéphane Mallarmé.
1889- Personal exhibition at the Goupil Gallery in London. In June of the same year the Georges Petit Gallery in Paris organized an important Monet-Rodin exhibition.
1890- Having made sufficient money from his work to buy the house in Giverny, he improved the garden and added a dam on the stream that ran into the river Epte so that he could make the lily pond surrounded by weeping willows, and later added a Japanese bridge.
1891- Death of Ernest Hoschedé. First exhibition of a ‘series’ (the millstones) at the Durand-Ruel gallery in Paris.
1892- Married Alice Hoschedé in July. In a letter to Theodore Robinson, Monet wrote of his admiration for Turner’s watercolors and his ‘Rain, Steam and Speed’.
1892/94- Made the series of Rouen cathedral at different times of day and in different light.
1898- Personal exhibition in Georges Petit Gallery in Paris where his ‘series’ of ‘Mornings on the Seine’ was presented.
1899- Monet stayed in London and painted a series of the Thames, the Charing Cross Bridge, the Houses of Parliament and Waterloo Bridge, partly from his hotel window, from February to April.
1899/1900- He began the series of the Giverny water-garden paintings giving prominence to the bridge.
1901- From January to April of this year he painted the ‘Saint-Thomas Hospital’ of London as well as sketches of the night scenes of Leicester Square while staying at the Savoy Hotel in London.
1903/08- He painted the second series of his Giverny water garden, dispensing with the bridge and concentrating on the water-lilies and reflections on the water.
1904- Exhibition of his London series at the Durand-Ruel Gallery in Paris in May. In December of the same year he visited London briefly where he planned an exhibition of the same London series that was finally cancelled. This was his last trip to London. In his Giverny studio he continued to work on his ‘London’ and then ’Water-lilies’ series.
1905- Grand retrospective of the Impressionists organized by Durand-Ruel in London which included 55 paintings by Monet.
1908- From October to December Monet painted in Venice.
1911 Death of Alice Hoschedé.
1912- Exhibition at the Bernheim-Jeune gallery in Paris of his Venetian series that he had finished in Giverny .
1923- He underwent an operation for cataracts so that he could finish the large 'Water-lilies' decorative panels commissioned by Clemenceau for the State.
1926- Death of Claude Monet on 5th December in Giverny.




Source for biographical data: catalogue of the exhibition.