Claude Monet

Claude Monet 14 November 1840 – 5 December 1926) was a French painter, a founder of French Impressionist painting and the most consistent and prolific practitioner of the movement's philosophy of expressing one's perceptions before nature, especially as applied to plein air landscape painting.The term "Impressionism" is derived from the title of his painting Impression, soleil levant (Impression, Sunrise), which was exhibited in 1874 in the first of the independent exhibitions mounted by Monet and his associates as an alternative to the Salon de Paris. 

His ambition to documenting the French countryside led to a method of painting the same scene many times so as to capture the changing of light and passing of the seasons. Among the best known examples are his series of haystacks (1890–91), paintings of the Rouen Cathedral (1894) and of the water-lily pond he build at his home in Giverny.

Frequently exhibited and successful during his lifetime, his fame and popularity soared in the second half of the 20th century when he became one of the word's most famous painters and a source of inspiration for burgeoning groups of artists.