Hellen Keller
Albert Einstein
Claude Monet -famous painter
his painting was abit of a gift and talent -read his story
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Biography: Claude Monet
The French painter Claude Monet (1840-1926) was the seminal figure in the evolution of impressionism, a pivotal style in the development of modern art.
The second half of the 19th century witnessed profound and disrupting shifts within the larger course of Western art. Many artistic attitudes which had prevailed since the beginning of the Renaissance gave way to approaches which differed radically from the practices of the Old Masters. In painting, for instance, illusionism was one of the fundamental Renaissance values: paintings were regarded as windows through which one viewed the natural world. But in the 19th century a new approach gradually replaced the illusionist aim: paintings became increasingly two-dimensional, openly declaring flatness as an intrinsic feature of their identity. They became events in themselves, phenomena to be confronted rather than windows to be seen through.
Impressionism occupies a crucial, yet paradoxical, position in the 19th century's changing interpretation of the painting enterprise. In the hands of Claude Monet, Pierre Auguste Renoir, Camille Pissarro, and others, the new style (it was not called impressionism until 1874) was initially conceived in the spirit of illusionism. As it evolved, however, certain of its tenets emerged as being, in effect, anti-illusionist. Monet's art reveals both the complexities and the paradoxes of this historical phenomenon. In addition, it reveals how impressionism constitutes a turning point in the development of modern art.
Monet was born in Paris on Nov. 14, 1840. In 1845 his family moved to Le Havre, and by the time he was 15 Monet had developed a local reputation as a caricaturist. Through an exhibition of his caricatures in 1858 Monet met Eugène Boudin, a landscape painter who exerted a profound influence on the young artist. Boudin introduced Monet to outdoor painting, an activity which he entered reluctantly but which soon became the basis for his life's work.
By 1859 Monet was determined to pursue an artistic career. He visited Paris and was impressed by the paintings of Eugène Delacroix, Charles Daubigny, and Camille Corot. Against his parents' wishes, Monet decided to stay in Paris. He worked at the free Académie Suisse, where he met Pissarro, and he frequented the Brasserie des Martyrs, a gathering place for Gustave Courbet and other realists who constituted the vanguard of French painting in the 1850s.
http://www.answers.com/topic/claude-monet
this has his painting and story too!
http://www.artnewsblog.com/2008/10/c...ionists-in.htm
Paint what you really see, not what you think you ought to see; not the object isolated as in a test tube, but the object enveloped in sunlight and atmosphere, with the blue dome of Heaven reflected in the shadows" Claude Monet Quote