Monet was born on November 14, 1840, in Paris, and he moved with his family to Le Havre on the Seine estuary in the 1840s. His father Adolphe joined a wholesale grocery business and he made enough profit to lead a comfortable life. Monet's mother died in 1857 and Monet spent much time with his aunt who encouraged his artistic inclinations, unlike his father. Monet spent most of his youth in Le Havre, drawing caricatures of the locals, a talent, which got him into trouble at school (Folkes). By age fifteen he was already receiving commission for his work. He then met Eugène Boudin in 1857 when he was sixteen. He took an interest in

In late 1889 he tried to purchase Édouard Manet's Olympia from the artist's widow and donate it to the French government. As he perused his task he stopped painting for almost an entire year. He wanted to avoid the fate that Jean-Francois Millet's painting Angelus had. It had been sold to a foreign collector. Monet had other reasons such as to achieve a political advantage and promote the Impressionist cause. The government had opposed the painting before and if they were given the painting they would have to accept the movement of art. He sent letters to the government and the whole affair was highly publicized. After the painting had been accepted Monet knew he had defended Impressionism against the French State (Lallemand).

In fall of 1890 Monet purchased his house in Giverny. In buying the house, he became a landowner for the first time. In the following years, he also bought the piece of land was adjacent to his house and he began to construct a garden pond which had a small Japanese style wooden bridge. His owning a home for the first time may have spurred him to paint purely landscapes (Chew). During the late spring and early summer the water lilies in the pond were in full bloom and he painted his famous water lily paintings.

Monet also spent time to travel abroad, to visit his son, and simply to travel. He painted a series in the Thames River. He traveled to Madrid in 1904. He also went to Venice and after the exhibition of his Venetian canvases in 1912 he undertook only summer subjects in the confines of his own gardens (Folkes). Monet's life had become more isolated, after the death of his second wife Alice in 1911, His eyesight began to fail, making it harder for him to paint. In 1914 his eldest son Jean married Blanche. Blache later returned to Giverny to support Monet until his death on December 5, 1926 (Lallemand).

Monet's talents and invited him to paint in open air. Boudin became Monet's unofficial teacher for several years as well as his mentor.

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