Fun Facts About Claude Monet

Interested to know the man behind the famous “Water Lilies” Painting that has captured the fascination of many people worldwide?

Here are some fun facts you may not know about Claude Monet:

• He helped to invent and create the style we know today as “Impressionism”.
• He was fascinated with painting things as they appeared when hit by sunlight.
• He enjoyed depicting nature including plants, oceans and lakes, ponds, and boats.
• He was seen as a rebel during his school years as he would frequently draw funny caricatures of his friends and teachers instead of working.
• He never planned to be a painter and was never interested in painting much until he met future mentor Eugene Boudin. Eugene encouraged him to paint in “plein aire” or outdoors He then enrolled in art school only to drop out shortly after.
• Before going on to paint “en plein aire,” he drew caricatures for locals, neighbors and friends to make money and was very prosperous at a young age for doing so.
• Monet served in the military in Algeria for a time. His aunt helped him get out of service on the condition that he take an art course at a university. He left the army and  enrolled in the art, but because he disliked the traditional painting styles the university taught, he dropped out shortly after.
• He was lifelong friends with Auguste Renoir, the painter with whom he founded the Impressionist movement and often painted with.
• He painted his first wife Camille on her death-bed.
• The Impressionist movement and consequent style were named after one of his paintings- “Impression: Sunrise.”

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