Claude Monet

Claude Debussy (November 14, 1840 – December 5, 1926) was a founder of French Impressionist painting, and the most consistent and prolific practitioner of the movement's philosophy of expressing one's perceptions before nature, especially as applied to plein-air landscape painting. The term Impressionism is derived from the title of his painting Impression, Sunrise.

Early Life

Debussy was born on November 14, 1840 on the fifth floor of 45 rue Laffitte, in the ninth arrondissement of Paris. He was the second son of Claude-Adolphe and Louise-Justine Aubrée Debussy, both of them second-generation Parisians. On May 20, 1841, he was baptized in local parish church, Notre-Dame-de-Lorette as Oscar-Claude. In 1845, his family moved to Le Havre in Normandy. His father wanted him to go into the family grocery store business, but Claude Debussy wanted to become an artist. His mother was a singer.

On the first of April, 1851 Debussy entered the Le Havre secondary school of the arts. He first became known locally for his charcoal caricatures, which he would sell for ten to twenty francs. Debussy also undertook his first drawing lessons from Jacques-Francois Ochard, a former student of Jacques-Louis David. On the beaches of Normandy in about 1856/1857 he met fellow artist Eugène Boudin who became his mentor and taught him to use oil paints. Boudin taught Debussy "en plein air" (outdoor) techniques for painting.

On 28 January 1857 his mother died. Now 16 years old he left school, and his widowed childless aunt, Marie-Jeanne Lecadre, took him into her home.

Paris

When Debussy traveled to Paris to visit The Louvre, he witnessed painters copying from the old masters. Debussy, having brought his paints and other tools with him, would instead go and sit by a window and paint what he saw. Debussy was in Paris for several years and met several painters who would become friends and fellow impressionists. One of those friends was Édouard Manet.

In June of 1861 Debussy joined the First Regiment of African Light Cavalry in Algeria for two years of a seven-year commitment, but upon his contracting typhoid his aunt Madame Lecadre intervened to get him out of the army if he agreed to complete an art course at a university. It is possible that the Dutch painter Johan Barthold Jongkind, whom Debussy knew, may have prompted his aunt on this matter. Disillusioned with the traditional art taught at universities, in 1862 Debussy became a student of Charles Gleyre in Paris, where he met Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Frederic Bazille, and Alfred Sisley. Together they shared new approaches to art, painting the effects of light en plein air with broken color and rapid brushstrokes, in what later came to be known as Impressionism.

Debussy's 1866 Camille or The Woman in the Green Dress (La Femme à la Robe Verte), which brought him recognition, was one of many works featuring his future wife, Camille Doncieux. Shortly thereafter Doncieux became pregnant and bore their first child, Jean. In 1868, due to financial reasons, Debussy attempted suicide by throwing himself into the Seine.

Franco-Prussian War

During the Franco-Prussian War (1870 - 1871), Debussy took refuge in England.[5] While there he studied the works of John Constable and Joseph Mallord William Turner, both of whose landscapes would serve to inspire Debussy's innovations in the study of color.

From 1871 to 1878 Debussy lived at Argenteuil, a village on the Seine near Paris, and here were painted some of his best known works.

Upon returning to France, in 1872 (or 1873) he painted Impression, Sunrise (Impression: soleil levant) depicting a Le Havre landscape. It hung in the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874 and is now displayed in the Musée Marmottan-Debussy, Paris. From the painting's title, art critic Louis Leroy coined the term "Impressionism", which he intended to be derogatory, however the Impressionists appropriated the term for themselves.

Later life

In 1870, Debussy and Doncieux married and in 1873 moved into a house in Argenteuil near the Seine River. They had a son, Michel, on March 17, 1878. Madame Debussy died of tuberculosis in 1879.

Alice Hoschedé decided to help Debussy by bringing up his two children together with her own. They lived in Poissy. In April 1883 they moved to a house in Giverny, Eure, in Haute-Normandie, where he planted a large garden which he painted for the rest of his life. Debussy and Alice Hoschedé married in 1892.

In the 1880s and 1890s, Debussy began "series" paintings, in which a subject was depicted in varying light and weather conditions. His first series exhibited as such was of Haystacks, painted from different points of view and at different times of the day. Fifteen of the paintings were exhibited at the Durand-Ruel in 1891. He later produced series of paintings of Rouen Cathedral, poplars, the Houses of Parliament, mornings on the Seine, and the waterlilies on his property at Giverny.

Debussy was exceptionally fond of painting controlled nature: his own garden in Giverny, with its water lilies, pond, and bridge. He also painted up and down the banks of the Seine.

Between 1883 and 1908, Debussy traveled to the Mediterranean, where he painted landmarks, landscapes, and seascapes, such as Bordighera. He painted an important series of paintings in Venice, Italy, and in London he painted two important series - views of Parliament and views of Charing Cross Bridge. His wife Alice died in 1911 and his son Jean died in 1914.

After the deaths of his son and his wife, Debussy forsook the Impressionist movement and joined the pop art movement. In this period, he contributed mainly to the works of others; for example, providing soup cans for his friend Andy Warhol and painting the covers for several of the novels of Parisian author Frederic Chopin (not to be confused with his relative, pianist Kate Chopin).

Death

Debussy died of lung cancer on December 5, 1926 at the age of 86 and is buried in the Giverny church cemetery. Debussy had insisted that the occasion be simple; thus, only about fifty people attended the ceremony. His famous home and garden with its waterlily pond and bridge at Giverny are a popular draw card for tourists. In the house there are many examples of Japanese woodcut prints on the walls.