Claude Monet is born in Paris. Five years later his family moves to Le Havre. Monet spends his childhood and school years here.

Claude Monet begins taking drawing lessons in 1856. Soon, he is able to sell some of his first caricatures at a profit.

Inspired by his acquaintance with the landscape painter Eugène Boudin, Monet receives the first impulse for his own paintings. Inspired by Boudin’s early form of open-air painting, Monet creates numerous harbour and coastal scenes around Le Havre and later also in the forest of Fontainebleau, south-east of Paris. Working in the open air, he creates a new, anti-academic style of landscape painting.

During his studies at the Académie Suisse in Paris, Monet meets Camille Pissarro and a new friendship develops. After his military service, he continues his studies in 1862 and paints in the forest of Fontainebleau with his fellow students from the studios of Charles Gleyre, Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley and Jean Frédéric Bazille. Inspired by the realism in paintings by Gustave Courbet and Eduard Manet, he strives for a modern visual language and draws on ideas from photography and Japanese woodblock prints.

Monet creates his first figurative open-air painting: Breakfast in the Green, Camille Doncieux and Bazille are his models. He meets Paul Cézanne, Gustave Courbet, Manet and Pissaro. Monet exhibits at the Salon for the first time and paints in Trouville in Normandy. In 1866 Monet presents Camille or The Woman in the Green Dress and receives praising reviews. The model is his mistress, Camille Doncieux. He becomes close friends with Emile Zola. In 1869, two years after the birth of his son, Monet paints the island La Grenouillère together with Auguste Renoir. He breaks away from the academically influenced tone-in-tone painting and dissolves the motifs into patches of colour.

Monet marries Camille, flees to London from the war and enthusiastically studies the works of John Constable and William Turner. He meets the Parisian art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel, who exhibits works by French artists in London and becomes his most important gallerist.

The period is marked by the death of his father, trips to Holland as well as the intense work and the renting of a house in Argenteuil in the autumn of 1871. This middle creative period of Claude Monet coincides with the heyday of Impressionism. Monet buys a boat and has it converted into a floating studio. In 1872 he paints Impression - soleil levant in Le Havre, which is shown in 1874 at the First Impressionist Exhibition in the studio of the photographer Félix Nadar and gives the group of artists its initially derogatory name: Impressionists. During this period, Monet´s themes become more varied. They conversely describe the beauty of nature juxtaposed with modern industrial plants. He cultivates a friendship with Gustave Caillebotte, who will also support him financially.

Monet becomes friends with the department store magnate and art speculator Ernest Hoschedé and his wife Alice. Together with Manet, Monet and his family accept an invitation to Hoschedé’s chateau near Montgeron. Monet’s wife Camille falls seriously ill.

After the financial ruin of Hoschedé, Monet and his family also experience great financial difficulties. This is followed by a move to Paris, the birth of their son Michel and another move to Vétheuil on the Seine. Alice Hoschedé follows them with their six children. Monet’s wife Camille’s condition deteriorates.

The fourth Impressionist exhibition takes place and shows 29 paintings by Monet. His wife Camille dies at the age of 32. Alice Hoschedé takes over the care of the children Jean and Michel, in addition to her own six children. Money troubles are the most pressing topic. Artistically, Monet occupies himself with ice landscapes.

Monet has differences with Edgar Degas. In 1881, the gallery owner Durand-Ruel buys more of Monet’s paintings and financially supports his painting trips to the Norman coast. In December 1881 Claude Monet and Alice Hoschedé move to Poissy with their children.

Monet works in Le Havre and rents a house in Giverny where the Epte flows into the Seine. The art dealer Durand-Ruel commissions him to decorate flowers for his Paris flat.

The 1884 “Salon des Indépendants” is founded in Paris. In the same year, Monet paints on the Italian Riviera. He quarrels with his friend Zola. The sale of his paintings flourish. Trips to Holland follow, where Monet visits Haarlem and The Hague and paints tulip fields, as well as painting stays in Étretat and Brittany. Here Monet meets the art critic Gustave Geffroy in 1886, who later becomes his biographer. There is a successful exhibition of his paintings by the art dealer Durand-Ruel in New York. In 1888 Monet paints on the Côte d’Azur. Back home, he begins the series of haystacks in Giverny.

Claude Monet acquires the house and the property in Giverny, which he has already lived in for seven years. This is followed by intensive work on redesigning the garden. Corn stacks, poplars modelled on Japanese woodblock prints and fields of poppies form Monet’s artistic themes. After Ernest Hoschedé’s death in 1891, Claude Monet and his widow Alice legitimate their relationship through marriage the following year.

Monet buys a large plot of land close to his house in Givemy with a nearby stream. He has a pond built in which he plants water lilies. The garden is gradually transformed into a water landscape. He also continues the series of cathedral paintings of Rouen. His paintings are shown at the Chicago World’s Fair. Monet demands the outrageous price of 15,000 francs for each of the cathedral pictures. He travels to Oslo to visit his stepson, also a painter. In Giverny, the construction of the Japanese Bridge over his pond takes place and the first paintings on this theme are created.

Monet travels to Normandy and begins the series Mornings on the Seine. He has an outbuilding built on his property and uses this as a second studio during winter. On another trip to Normandy he devotes himself to the cliffs. In 1897 20 of his paintings are exhibited at the second Venice Biennale. In 1899, the death of both his friend Alfred Sisley, and, also, Alice’s daughter Suzanne Butler plunge Monet into deep mouming. Next, Monet begins the series of Water Lilies and the Japanese Bridge, a theme he will explore for 27 years! In the autumn of 1899 he is in London again and produces a new series of Thames paintings.

More Thames paintings are produced and Monet paints in Vétheuil on the Seine. As a result of an accident, he temporarily loses his sight. Monet acquires another plot of land to enlarge his water garden and creates the wisteria trellis at the Japanese Bridge. At this time, Monet also visits Brittany and he continues to work on the Thames pictures from memory in his studio. Together with Alice, he travels to Madrid in 1904 by car, where he studies the works of the Spanish masters in the Prado.

Monet continues his work on the Water Lilies and Themes series. The first photographs of his garden are published. In Giverny he works mainly on the water lily pictures, but is not satisfied. He paints over and destroys some of these paintings. In 1908 he begins showing the first signs of cataracts. From October to December of the same year, he leaves for Venice with his wife. Alice dies in the summer of 1911, and by 1912 Monet had created the series of paintings of Venice - partly from memory. Monet’s eyesight continues to deteriorate.

The completed Venice pictures are exhibited with great success in Paris. At the same time, Monet is diagnosed with double- sided cataracts in 1912. The French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau asks him for a group of large wall paintings of water lilies as a gift to the state. In this assignment Monet will find his purpose over many years. In 1914 Monet’s eldest son dies and his widow takes over the household. In 1915, a third studio is built in order to be able to paint the large-format murals, which were over 13 feet wide. On the occasion of the armistice in 1918, Monet donates eight of his water lily paintings to the state. His eyesight deteriorates further, but he feares the operation.

Monet announces the donation of 12 paintings from his water garden to the state. At the same time, there were disagreements with Clemenceau. Monet has also been denied admission to the prestigious Institute de France. Monet’s mood is clouded, partly because of his failing eyesight. In 1922, he signs a contract with the state to donate the water lily wall paintings, which he agrees to install in the Orangerie of the Tuileries Gardens. After successful operations, Monet partially regained his sight and began to paint again in 1923.

Monet, who could barely see by the summer of 1926, burns and destroys some of the water lily murals he had painted. Having become bedridden, Claude Monte dies on 6 December 1926 in his house in Giverny at the age of 86. On 17 May 1927, the water lily murals are inaugurated in an oval room in the Musée de l’Orangerie. The viewer believes he is standing on an island in the middle of the water. Although initially his work seems to drift into obscurity, Claude Monet would become a towering role model for artists in the second half of the 20th century - until today.