Claude Monet

The archetypal Impressionist. He credited Boudin and Jongkind (a friend as well as tutor) with opening his eyes, and met Renoir, Pissarro and Sisley as a student. Renoir and he developed the essential Impressionist vocabulary for landscape, painting together beside the Seine. Cézanne, Morisot, Renoir, Pissarro and Sisley — along with Monet — formed an artists’ limited company, and showed their work in Nadar’s studio. He and Valéry visited each other, and he introduced Mallarmé to Whistler. Courbet witnessed his first marriage, Degas was an especially close friend. Zola was among regulars at the same café; another, Manet, called him the Raphael of water.