Claude Monet (1840-1926) is regarded as the father and leader of the impressionist movement. With his friends Degas, Caillebotte, Pissarro and Sisley, he shared a love of art and nature that led him to break completely with the conventions laid down by the Académie des Beaux-Arts, at the time the sole arbiter of good taste. Together, they proclaimed the virtues of art for its own sake and the act of painting "what the eye actually sees".
Claude Monet (1840-1926) is regarded as the father and leader of the impressionist movement. With his friends Degas, Caillebotte, Pissarro and Sisley, he shared a love of art and nature that led him to break completely with the conventions laid down by the Académie des Beaux-Arts, at the time the sole arbiter of good taste. Together, they proclaimed the virtues of art for its own sake and the act of painting "what the eye actually sees".
