Claude Monet was born on 14th November 1840, in Paris.
He was the second son of Claude Adolphe Monet, and Louise Justine Aubrée Monet.
On 1st April 1851, he entered Le Havre secondary school of the arts.
He was a talented student who, after showing skill in art from a young age, begun to draw caricatures and portraits at the age of 15 for money.
From 1861 to 1862, Monet was in Algiers on Military Service.
On his return to Paris, he divided his time between his childhood home, and the countryside.
In 1867, his then-mistress, Camille Doncieux, who he had met two years prior as a model for his paintings, gave birth to their first child, Jean.
Monet had a strong relationship with Jean, claiming that Camille was his lawful wife, so Jean would be considered legitimate.
He married Camille on 28th June 1870, just before the outbreak of the Franco Prussian War.
To avoid conscription, Monet took his family, and lived in London and the Netherlands.
While living in London, Monet became friends with his art dealer, Paul Durand-Ruel.
Monet saw, and admired, the works of Constable and Turner.
Monet was especially awed by Turner's treatment of light, especially in the works depicting the fog on the Thames.
The family moved to Argenteuil in 1871, where he mostly painted the Seine, and surrounding area.
He acquired a sail boat to paint on the river.
In 1874, he signed a six-and-a-half year lease and moved into a newly built "rose-colored house with green shutters" where he painted fifteen paintings of his garden, from a panoramic perspective.
In 1876, Camille Monet became seriously ill.
Their second son, Michel, was born in 1878, after which Camille's health deteriorated further.
In the autumn of that year, they moved to the village of Vetheuil.
In 1878, Camille was diagnosed with uterine cancer.
She died the following year.
Her death, alongside financial difficulties, affected Monet's career.
In 1883, Monet and his family rented a house and garden in Giverny.
There was a barn that doubled as a painting studio, some orchards and a small garden.
The house was close enough to the local schools for the children to attend, and the surrounding landscape provided numerous natural areas for Monet to paint.
The gardens were Monet's greatest source of inspiration for 40 years.
In 1890, Monet purchased the house, and built a greenhouse and a second studio - a spacious building well lit with skylights.
In 1899, he began painting the water lilies that would occupy him continuously for the next 20 years of his life.
This was to be his last and "most ambitious" sequence of paintings.
Monet was diagnosed with cataracts in 1912, and his doctor recommended that he undergo surgery.
He refused.
Over the subsequent decade, his ability to see more minute detail, reduced.
Cataracts causes the lens of the eye to become denser and more yellowish over time, and subsequently this changed Monet's distinctions between colors, and lessened their intensity, reflected in his paintings from this time.
Monet died of lung cancer on 5th December 1926, at the age of 86, and is buried in the Giverny church cemetery.
Monet had insisted that the occasion be simple, only about fifty people were invited to attend the ceremony.
At his funeral, the black cloth draped over the coffin was removed, and replaced it with a flower-patterned cloth.
There was to be "No black for Monet!"
At the time of his death, Waterlilies was "technically unfinished".
Monet's home, garden, and water lily pond, were bequeathed by Michel to the French Academy of Fine Arts in 1966.
Following some restoration, the house and gardens were opened for visits in 1980.
Photo of Monet in his beloved Garden, one of his greatest inspirations ~ 1921.
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