If not for Claude Monet, we would never have seen the beginning of the Impressionist school of painting in France. If not for Monet, we might never have enjoyed such a breakthrough in the use of color that changed the art world forever.

Claude Monet was born in 1840 in Paris. He learned how to paint from a fellow artist named Eugene Boudin, who showed the young man how to paint with quality while outdoors (a style known in French as "en plein air"). While inspired by the old masters on display at the Louvre, Monet wanted to paint less abstract and grand subjects. Like the rest of his circle of fellow artists, he was drawn to painting ordinary people and outdoor settings. However, while Monet was reasonably successful as a painter, his work did not receive much critical acclaim during his lifetime. Like van Gogh and other artists at the time, Monet's work sold better and was more celebrated after his death.

What Monet brought--and what Impressionists continued to bring--was a sense of personal feeling. Classic painters were more likely to portray their subjects using realistic details and distinct lines. Monet and other Impressionists put more emphasis on color than on lines, creating a more fluid scene that might better capture their emotions and impressions at the time of their painting. Colors were allowed to blend together to develop a scene's atmosphere, becoming more of the focus than the subject itself.

The first known painting that Monet did in such a style--and the one that inspired the name "Impressionism"--is a simple painting known as Impression, Sunrise. But consider also later paintings like Les Coquelicots ("Poppies" in English). The scene is very simple--a mother and her child in a field of blooming poppies--but what matters isn't the detail, but the feeling inside the painting. It's a pastoral scene, with rich red poppies and a vast blue sky. The mother and the child aren't easy to distinguish from the field in which they stand. What Monet captures is a deep impression of a peaceful day and a family outing. And because it's so indistinct, it's easy for the audience to put themselves in the moment and imagine themselves standing among the poppies.

The works of Claude Monet are available for viewing at such museums as the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, and the Art Institute of Chicago.

Image by ErgSap on Flickr