Claude Monet
Claude Monet established the Impressionist movement at the end of the 19th century. The term Impressionism is derived from the title of his painting “Impression, Sunrise“ in 1874. Going against established methods of studio painting, Monet, and the group which saw him as its’ intellectual leader, sought their themes out of doors and developed a brilliantly visual style of painting in natural light. Monet was the most consistent and prolific practitioner of the movement's philosophy of expressing one's perceptions before nature, especially as applied to plein-air landscape painting. Born in Paris in 1840, the artist, already famous in his own lifetime, died at Giverny in 1926.
