But throughout his career, he maintained keen fresh eyes and an astounding fascination and desire to explore the nuances and interplay of light and color that is to be found in nature.

This past August, Linda Sorensen and I saw many Monet paintings in Paris at the Musee d'Orsay, the Musee de l'Orangerie, and a special exhibition at the Petit Palais. As a way to prepare for these two U.S. Monet exhibitions, here are images of the Monet paintings we saw, displayed in chronological order, noting Monet's age when each was painted, along with biographical events happening simultaneously in his life.

He was born in Paris in 1840, baptized a Catholic and his first name was Oscar. As an adult, he became an atheist. When he was 4 years old, his father moved the family to the port city of Le Havre, located at the mouth of the Seine.

Claude studied art in high school in Le Havre. As early as the age of 11, Claude was known to locals for his talent of drawing charcoal caricatures which the lad sold for 10 or 20 francs. When he was 16, while walking his local beach, he met Eugene Boudin, an artist who introduced Claude to oil paints and the benefits of painting outdoors.

Just a few months after his 16th birthday, Claude's mother died.

Soon afterward, Claude went to live with his aunt, Marie-Jeane Lecandre, in Paris. In Paris, like many aspiring young artists, Claude visited the Louvre. But unlike others who studied the masters by copying the masters' paintings while standing at easel in front of a master's paintings, Claude moved his paints to the window and painted what he saw outdoors. It was during this period he became friends with an artist 8 years his senior, Edouard Manet.

Monet in his 20's ... In 1861, Claude was 21 years old. He drew a low number in the French draft, and joined the First Regiment of African Light Cavalry in Algeria for 7 years. His father could have easily purchased Claude's way out of the military, but refused because Claude would not give up painting.

Monet painted little while in Algeria, a few sketches, casbah scenes and portraits of officers, all now lost.

In 1900, Claude, was 60 when interviewed by the periodical, Le Temps. Looking back on his brief time in Algeria, he stated that the light and vivid colors he saw in North Africa "contained the germ of my future researches."

After a year of garrison duty in Algiers, Claude contracted typhoid fever. He went AWOL. Claude's aunt Marie-Jeane Lecandre agreed to pay Claude's way out of the army if he would pledge to complete an art course in school.

Monet agreed, but did not like traditional art schools. He became a student of Charles Gleyre in Paris through whom he met Auguste Renoir, Frederic Bazille, and Alfred Sisley.

They all shared enthusiasm for painting en plein air using techniques of broken color and rapid brush strokes -- later to become known as impressionism.

In 1865, Claude, now 25, submitted a large painting done in a realist style. The Woman in the Green Dress was entered into the Salon de Paris. His model was Camille, who later would bear their first child Jean in 1867 and become his first wife.

Soon after their son Jean was born, the Monets' financial straits were harsh. Claude's father was unwilling to help. In a fit of depression and a sense of helplessness, Claude Monet tried to drown himself in the Seine.

But Claude did catch a break. The Woman in the Green Dress showed well at the Paris Salon, and Monet was able to sell it for 800 francs, a good price at the time for an unknown artist, and he was commissioned to do a portrait of Madame Gaudibert. With this minor success, his career seemed to be on its way.

Monet in his 30's ... Claude and Camille were married in June of 1870. Claude was 29. At the time, the Franco-Prussian War was breaking out.

To escape conscription into the French military, the newly married Monets strained to live for a time in London and in Zaandam in the Netherlands.

While in London, Claude visited museums and studied the paintings of John Constable and J.M.W. Turner. Claude was very impressed by their use of color and especially Turner's use of light.

After London, the couple lived briefly in the Netherlands. He visited Amsterdam. While in Holland, he completed 42 paintings, mostly landscapes with windmills, ships and tulip fields.

The Monets hastened their return to France because local Dutch police suspected him of revolutionary activities.

Back in France, they settled in the village of Argenteuil, on the right bank of the Seine near Paris, a popular destination for Parisians seeking a spot in the country for Sunday outings. While in Argenteuil, he purchased a boat which he made into a floating mini-studio.

Claude painted landscapes from the boat and painted a portrait of his friend Edouard Manet and his wife. Manet returned the favor, painting Monet aboard his studio-boat, along with Camille.

While in Argenteuil, Claude painted scenes of modern life. Often he was joined in Argenteuil by his friends Renoir, Manet, Sisley.

Even so, their years in Argenteuil were years of poverty for Claude and Camille. The young Monet was volatile, given to fits of depression and self doubt. It is estimated that he destroyed nearly 500 of his own paintings, burning, cutting or simply kicking through them.

After a successful exhibition of some of his maritime paintings, creditors seized Claude's paintings. Later, the paintings were bought back by Monet's patron, shipping merchant Gaudibert.

Beginning in the late 1870's, Claude Monet and other like minded artists were rejected from the Academie des Beaux-Arts and their annual exhibition at the Salon de Paris.

Monet, Renoir, Pissarro and Sisley organized the Societe anonyme de artistes peintres, scupteurs and graveurs (Anonymous Society of Painters, Sculptors, and Engravers) to exhibit their work independently.

In April, 1874, (age 33), the group held its first exhibition. Claude exhibited his Impression Sunrise (1872).

Louis Leroy, in his review, "L'Exposition des Impressionnistes," which appeared in Le Charivari, coined the term "Impressionism". It was intended as disparagement but the Impressionists appropriated the term for themselves.

In 1876, Claude Monet met Alice and Ernest Hoschede. Ernest was a wealthy department store magnate and art collector. The Hoschedes commissioned several paintings by Monet. During this time, it may have been that Monet began an affair with Alice. Alice's youngest son, Jean-Pierre may have been fathered by Claude.

When Claude was 35 in 1875, his younger wife Camille fell ill with tuberculosis. Although ill, she bore their second child Michael in 1878 (Claude was 37.)

Lilacs, Grey Weather is one of two canvases done in his home in Argenteuil in 1872.

With Camille's illness, Claude probably stayed close to home and painted when he could, choosing scenes available to him. In the first, two people are seated in dappled shade and the other with an overcast sky and darker shade.

This is the first time Monet painted the same scene with different effects, setting him in the direction of creating paintings in series. Monet painted many garden scenes of his home, his young family, and paintings of the water and the colorful boats on the Seine. The vertical lines of masts gave structure and rhythm.

In Argenteuil, Claude and Camille's family life enjoyed some tranquil and safe moments. In The Breakfast, 1873, we have an image of the family's garden. Their young son Jean plays next to a simply set table with fruit and coffee. In the background, a nanny or Camille keeps close watch.

Like his impressionist colleagues in Paris, in these early years of his career, his paintings in Argenteuil were scenes of the modern world. In Railway Bridge at Argenteuil, a newly constructed bridge supports a train crossing the Seine. In the later years of his career, Monet seldom included any hint of the modern world.

In 1877, Ernest Hoshede's fortunes changed and he went bankrupt. To cut expenses, the Hoshedes decided to share a home with the Monets. They found a place in Vetheuil.

During Camille's illness, Alice helped the Monets by caring for Claude and Camille's children, Jean and Michael, as well as own her six children, Blanche, Germaine, Suzanne, Marthe, Jean-Pierre and Jacques.

Camille's health deteriorated. She was diagnosed with uterine cancer. She died in 1879 at the young age of 32. Claude was only 38.

Part of his grieving included Claude's painting the image of his now dead wife. Camille Monet on her Deathbed was described by art critic John Berger as "a blizzard of white, grey, purplish paint ... a terrible blizzard of loss which will forever efface her features. In fact there can be very few death-bed paintings which have been so intensely felt or subjectively expressive."

Monet in his 40's ... After Camille's death, Claude and his two sons remained living with the Hoshede family, but they too had problems. In 1878, prior to Camille's death, Ernest met with hard times, declared bankruptcy, and left for Belgium. In 1880, just months after Camille's death, Alice took Claude's two sons along with her six children to live for a time in Paris. Claude remained living in the Hoshede house in Vetheuil.

He embarked on a new flurry of artistic output. Monet documented the French countryside, and began creating paintings in series, exploring the same subject, but with different light and atmospheric conditions

In 1881, Alice and all 8 children returned to Vetheuil and reunited with Claude. In 1881, the newly formed family moved to Poissy, about 25 miles west of central Paris. Claude did not like Poissy, feeling closed in.

While traveling by train, just east of Vernon, Claude eyed Giverny. He investigated, and in 1883, he rented a house in Vernon a few miles from Giverny, with dreams of moving there.

Soon afterward, he rented the house in Giverny with two acres of surrounding grounds which would become his home for the remaining 43 years of his life.

Monet in his 50's ... While in his mid 40's, Monet's art was becoming popular. After Ernest Hoshede died, in 1992 at age 50, Claude married Alice.

By this time, Claude was able to stop renting his Givery home and purchase it. Initially, he hired two full time gardeners, but soon the number grew to six. He built greenhouses to propagate species and reserve bulbs. He rented a separate garden to grow vegetables and fruits, using the large gardens adjacent to the house exclusively for flowers. He collected extravagant and exotic species, peonies, delphiniums, Oriental poppies, asters and all kinds of varieties of sunflowers.

When Monet was 52 - 54 years old, he painted a series of 30 paintings of the Rouen Cathedral. Monet was interested in the distinctly different character of the light at different times of the day and with different atmospheric conditions. The effect of the light was as important to Monet as the subject itself. Monet rented a small studio across from the Cathedral. He exhibited the paintings in Paris, and earned praise from fellow artists Camille Pissarro and Paul Cezanne.

Monet in his 60's ... During his 60's, Claude continued painting series of paintings. He painted series of haystacks, the Rouen Cathedral, Poplars, Mornings on the Seine, Waterlilies and the Japanese Bridge at Giverny, views of Parliament and Charing Cross Bridge in London. 1n 1883 and 1908, Claude traveled to the Mediterranean. Most famous of these Mediterranean paintings were in Venice, Italy.

While we were in Paris in August, we were able to see a special exhibition at the Petit Palais, Impressionists in London, French Artists in Exile, 1870-1904.

The six Monet paintings pictured here were included in this exhibition. The first, Leicester Square at Night, 1901, seemed rather daring and out of the ordinary for Monet. Here, its all about the light, as no figures or architectural features are discernible, just an array of colored light glaring and reflecting in a dazzling interpretation of night life in central London.

The other five paintings were from Monet's series of Parliament paintings. Each of these paintings captured the ever changing light and atmospheric conditions affecting the Parliament building and the Thames in the foreground.

Monet completed 19 paintings of the Houses of Parliament, all the same size. The view is from the second floor of the St. Thomas Hospital. As Monet had shown with his paintings of haystacks and the Rouen Cathedral, Monet delights in showing the changing landscape as the light and fog conditions change.

Monet made two trips to London to capture this series, and continued to work on them in his studio back in Giverny, often working on several canvases simultaneously.

Unlike his first trip to London in the 1870's, this time Claude Monet had means. He and Alice stayed in style at the Savoy. He did not exhibit his London paintings immediately. He finally exhibited them in Paris in 1904. It was his most successful exhibition. Surprisingly, few of the buyers were British.

Monet in his 70's ... Alice died in 1911 when Claude was 71. His oldest son Jean died in 1914. Claude had cataracts and his vision was limited. In September of 1914, World War I broke out when Claude was 74 years old. His good politician friend Georges Clemenceau was the French Prime Minister. Claude's son Michael was serving in the French military. He was keenly aware of the war. As an homage to fallen French soldiers, he dedicated a series of paintings of Weeping Willow trees. His developing cataracts gave his paintings a general reddish tone.

Monet's last years, in his 80's ... After the war, Claude was 83 years old. He had two cataract surgeries in 1923. After the surgery, Claude noticed the difference the surgery made in his perception of color, and he went back to paintings done before the surgery, shifting the colors of his water lilies to be bluer. On December 5, 1926, Claude died at the age of 86. He was buried near his home in the church cemetery in Giverny.

40 years after Monet's death ... In 1966, Monet's home and gardens were bequeathed by Claude's heirs to the French Academy of Fine Arts. Monet's home and gardens were refurbished, and opened to the public in 1980. Now it is a "must see" for any fine arts visit to Paris.

In our next issue will be an article about Monet: The Late Years currently on exhibit at the de Young Museum in San Francisco through May 27. The exhibition will then move to the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, TX, Jun 16 - Sep 25.

Later this year, I hope to report on the other Western U.S. exhibition, Claude Monet: The Nature of Truth at the Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO, Oct 21-Feb 2, 2020. The exhibition will then move to the Museum Barberini in Potsdam, Germany.

Beyond Linda's studio, her paintings are currently showing at:

Bodega Landmark Gallery Collection,
located in the town of Bodega, west end of town a half block from the Casino, and just across from the General Store and the Bodega Volunteer Fire Department.

Corrick's "Art Trails Gallery,
located in downtown Santa Rosa on 4th Street, just steps from Santa Rosa's reopened Town Square.

6th Street Playhouse, The Red Shoes Gallery
6th Street Playhouse, The Studio Gallery,
52 W. 6th Street, Santa Rosa.

Bentonville, AR
Crystal Bridges
Museum of American Art

... IN GRATON, CA ...
Linda Sorensen's studio and Bodega Bay Heritage Gallery's showroom is now located in Atelier One, Graton. You may view all paintings in Linda Sorensen's or Bodega Bay Heritage Gallery's online offerings. Call or email for an appointment.

... IN YOUR HOME ... Call or email for a an appointment. If appropriate, we'll bring the art to you (up to 200 miles from Bodega Bay).

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