"For me, the subject is of secondary importance: what I want to convey is what is alive between me and the subject."
The French artist Claude Monet is recognized as the father of Impressionism. His work is based on the direct observation of nature - painting from nature - and the use of refracted prismatic light, building on Newton's work in particular, while eliminating black and gray from his palette. Critical reception in his early days was quite violently negative, but Monet persevered in his quest to replicate the texture of light. Whether it is Impression soleil levant (1872) which gave its name to Impressionism, or the many paintings inspired by his Japanese garden in Giverny, Monet is now unanimously celebrated as one of the greatest painters of the history of art. Cézanne rightly said of him, "Monet is nothing but an eye, but what an eye."