Claude Monet
Painted the same haystack, facade and lily pond over and over to catch what the light was doing.
Claude Monet was born in Paris in 1840 and grew up in Le Havre, where Eugene Boudin persuaded him to paint outdoors. Impression, Sunrise gave the movement its name at the 1874 exhibition, as an insult. The method that followed was serial: the same haystacks, the same poplars, Rouen Cathedral's facade, the Thames at Westminster, painted repeatedly at different hours so that the subject is the light rather than the thing. From 1883 he lived at Giverny, built the water garden, and spent the last thirty years on the water lilies, working through cataracts towards the vast decorative panels now in the Orangerie.
One of the most heavily documented artists in existence, with the Wildenstein catalogue raisonne as the reference, and anything not in it starts from a difficult position. The signature — a red or dark Claude Monet, usually lower right — is the single most forged element in nineteenth-century French painting and is not evidence of anything on its own. Late works from the Giverny years were left in the studio unsigned and were signed or released later, which is documented. Provenance, particularly across 1933 to 1945, is examined as a matter of course.
If you own a work by Claude Monet
Send photographs and whatever paperwork came with it. The first question is what the work actually is — edition or unique, when, and in what condition — because everything else follows from the answer. A valuation costs nothing and commits you to nothing.
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