Claude Monet
Claude Monet ( 14 November 1840 – 5 December 1926) "Portrait of Claude Monet" , Carolus-Duran, c. 1867 Oscar-Claude Monet (14 November 1840 – 5 December 1926) was a French painter and founder of impressionist 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 before nature, especially as applied to plein air (outdoor) landscape painting. The term ' Impressionism ' is derived from the title of his painting "Impression, Sunrise", exhibited in 1874 (the exhibition of rejects) initiated by Monet and his associates as an alternative to the Salon. Monet was raised in Le Havre, Normandy, and became interested in the outdoors and drawing from an early age. Although his mother, Louise-Justine Aubrée Monet, supported his ambitions to be a painter, his fat