Is Claude Monet (1840-1926) the last great master of the 19th century or the first great painter of the 20th century?
His innovative art, like that of his contemporary Rodin, embodies the transition from tradition to modernity.
A painter of colour and the outdoors, Monet is best known for being the leader of the Impressionist school in the fight against the emerging technique of photography that was beginning to reproduce reality much better than painting.
An artist on the fringes of academic education, his name triumphed in the early 20th century in the history of modern art and was regarded by American abstract expressionists as one of the forerunners of abstraction.
“Color is my daily obsession, my joy and my torment”. He said to sum up his art.
This is what Monet will put into practice throughout the last part of his life by constantly painting the variations during the seasons of the beautiful garden of his house in Giverny in the Eure.
The ever-changing patterns of the basin to the nympheas is at the origin of his last great work: the cycle of the Nympheas.
Before that, his obsession allowed him to restore as he saw it, and not as it pleases others to see (the motto of Impressionism), the variations of other landscapes that remained famous thanks to him, such as the bridges over the thames or the cliffs of Normandy.
