Born on this day, French artist Claude Monet (1840–1926) sought the perfect fusion of light and subject, capturing the fleeting impressions of nature. His 1874 painting Impression, Sunrise gave a name to the entire movement.

“Light is the most important person in the picture,” he said. The son of a grocer, Monet began painting outdoors as a teenager. “Suddenly,” he remembered, “a veil was torn away. I had understood. I had realized what painting could be.”

A passionate gardener, he painted landscapes, seascapes, and river scenes with subtle harmonies, breaking conventions as he went. He experimented with direct, sketch-like strokes of bright color, painting as if seeing the world for the first time.

“No one is an artist unless he carries his picture in his head before painting it, and is sure of his method and composition,” he explained.

At Giverny, a village northwest of Paris, he cultivated the garden that would shape his work for forty years. Zinnias, fuchsias, hollyhocks, and daisies flourished under his care. The water lilies became his great theme — recording their beauty and shifting light across the seasons.

An art dealer overwhelmed by one of Monet’s late canvases described the meeting of water and sky as having “neither beginning nor end. It is mysterious, delightfully unreal.”