Claude Monet
Claude Monet (French, 1840–1926) ranks among the greatest painters in the history of art. He was the most influential of the Impressionists, a group of painters who strove to capture the endless variations of light and atmosphere that occur over the course of a day in a given location. Indeed, Monet’s misty dawn painting
Impression, Sunrise gave rise to the movement’s name. His career spanned an artistic revolution, one that intensified realism and eventually led the way to abstraction and 20th-century Modernism. Among Monet’s best-loved works are landscapes, city scenes, still lifes, and his unparalleled paintings of flower-filled meadows and the exquisite gardens and water lily pond at his home in Giverny.