Nationality: French

Birthdate: 14 November 1840

Date of Death: 5 December 1926

GMC Ranking: 3

Oscar-Claude Monet was a French painter and founder of Impressionism painting who is seen as a key precursor to Modernism, especially in his attempts to paint nature as he perceived it. During his long career, he was the most consistent and prolific practitioner of Impressionism's philosophy of expressing one's perceptions of nature, especially as applied to outdoor landscape painting.

The term "Impressionism" is derived from the title of his painting Impression Soleil Levant, which was first exhibited in the so-called "Exhibition of Rejects" of 1874, an exhibition initiated by Monet and like-minded artists as an alternative to the Salon.

Monet began work in 1883 in the small village of Giverny down stream on the Seine from Paris. Then in 1893 he bought the land in front of his home and built a Japanese-style garden in the space. Monet used a small stream that ran through his property to build a huge pond which he filled with water lilies and crossed with a humpbacked bridge. He lined the banks with willows and shrubbery and retired to this watery realm isolated from the outside world to create his final series, "The Water Lilies". He built a glass-walled studio on the side of the garden and set up a wheeled easel that he could freely roll around the room.