November 14: Claude Monet

Claude Monet, French impressionist, sometimes called the Father of French Impressionism, famous for his pictures of waterlilies and serene gardens, was born on this date in 1840. Here are 10 things you might not know about him.

1. His mother encouraged his artistic talent, evident from a young age, but his father was less keen. He wanted young Claude to work in the family business, a grocery store. In order to be able to study art after his mother died, he left home to live with an aunt.
2. At 15, he was drawing caricatures of people in Le Havre, where he grew up and selling them for 10-20 francs each. He signed them O. Monet, because his first name was actually Oscar. Claude was his middle name.
3. He had a brief military career when drafted into the African Light Cavalry in Algeria. His father offered to pay to get him out of military service, but on the condition that he gave up painting. Monet refused - seven years national service was preferable to never painting again. However, a bout of typhoid after a year brought his army career to an end when his aunt paid for his discharge. Her condition was that he went to art school.
4. After this he went to art school, but hated it, as he was expected to produce formulaic art, and copy other people's pictures. His paintings were rarely accepted for the Academie's exhibitions. In the end, he was so depressed by this that he tried to commit suicide by throwing himself in the Seine. He survived, however, and found some other disgruntled art students to hang out with.
5. As it happened, this group included Renoir, Degas and Cezanne. They decided to organise their own exhibition in 1874. Not everyone liked their work. One critic descibed one of Monet's paintings as an unfinished sketch, or impression - and the term "Impressionists" was born.
6. Once his career took off and he was earning money, he invested a lot of it in creating a beautiful garden where he could paint. His famous paintings of waterlilies and a Japanese footbridge were views of his garden. He imported lilies from Egypt and South America. Not that he did the gardening himself - he hired six gardeners to look after the garden, including the task of paddling a boat into the pond every morning to clean the lily pads before he started painting them. The local council told him to get rid of the foreign plants in case they poisoned the water, but Monet refused to comply.
7. In later life, he suffered from cataracts to the extent that he was declared legally blind. Even though he put off having surgery, which was risky in those days, and complained that he could no longer see colours properly, it didn't stop him from painting. He'd memorised where each colour was on his palette and carried on. Critics maintained his impressionist style was more to do with him being unable to see than his talent. He eventually did have surgery and got tinted glasses to help him see colours. After the surgery, it's said that he could see ultraviolet light.
8. After the surgery, he destroyed a number of paintings he'd done while his vision was impaired. Even before that, it was by no means unknown for him to slash paintings he wasn't satisfied with. A 1908 exhibition of his work in Paris had to be postponed because he destroyed 15 of the paintings.
9. He married twice. His first wife was Camille. Monet painted her over 30 times, including on her deathbed when she tragically died at the age of 32. His second wife, Alice, was so jealous of Camille that she made Monet destroy all photos of and letters from her, so only one photo of her survives.
10. Monet died of lung cancer in 1926, at the age of 86. At his funeral, his friend Georges Clemenceau replaced the Black shroud on his coffin with a colourful, floral print, declaring, "No black for Monet!"

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