He was nearly 50 before he was self-sufficient.
At age 40, he wrote letters to fellow painter
Manet begging for money.
He roomed with Renoir. They lived for
a month on a sack of beans.
One critic called him “a lunatic.”
He had to pretend that he and his mistress
(of whom his family disapproved) had separated in
order to continue to receive funds to
survive on from his family.
He was one of the first painters to
move his studio outdoors.
He want to capture what
he called "instantaneity."
He want to capture what
he called "instantaneity."
He had cataracts. The paintings he did
when the cataracts severely affected his vision
had an unusual reddish tone, reflecting the effect
they had on the quality of his eyesight.
Local farmers would make the struggling
Monet pay a toll to cross their fields. They
would dismantle haystacks as he was painting
them and chop down poplars while
he was painting them, too.
He had a thing for painting haystacks.
In all light conditions.
Once while painting a budding oak, he paid
children to climb it to pick off all of its leaves,
so that he could best capture it in its un-budded state.
