Claude Monet was born November 14, 1840 in Paris, France. Monet was the leader of a group of French artists called the "Impressionists," which included such painters as Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Camille Pissarro.

Monet's family moved to the port town of Le Havre in 1845. He took his early art lessons from the painter, Eugene Boudin. Boudin, who worked up sketches out-of doors, encouraged Monet to do the same. "Suddenly the veil was torn away.... My destiny as a painter opened out to me," he later said. For the next 60+ years Monet explored the effects of light on outdoor scenes. He was the first artist to let his initial impressions stand as completed works, rather than as "notes" done in preparation for work in the studio.

Monet moved to Paris in 1859, where he met and befriended Pissarro and Edouard Manet. He married in 1870, and in 1871 settled in Argenteuil. He fixed up a boat with an easel and painted his way up and down the Seine River, capturing his impressions of the interplay of light, water and atmosphere.

In 1874 Monet and a group of painters including Pissarro and Renoir banded together to form a society of artists. They gave a public exhibition of their work at the studio of a Paris photographer. Monet exhibited a painting called "Impression: Sunrise." His painting gave the group its name, coined in derision by critic Louis Leroy referring to the entire exhibition as "Impressionistic." Despite the financial failure of this first exhibit, the Impressionist continued to exhibit together until 1886. Monet slowly achieved recognition in the years after the Impressionists disbanded. In 1883, he settled in Giverny, France and continued to paint, and explore his fascination with light until his death on December 5, 1926.