Claude Monet was born in Paris on November 14, 1840. When he was five years old, the family moved to the port town of Le Havre. For much of his childhood he was considered by both his teachers and parents to be undisciplined and therefore, unlikely to make a success of his life. When he was a fifteen, scornful of the quiet earnest pictures Boudin was painting, they met and Boudin, overcoming the younger man's resistance, urged him to study landscape.

Together they worked outdoors in the lovely Norman countryside around Le Havre and Monet became a "plein-airiste" (open-air painter) almost against his will - an ironical fact since it was he who later so fanatically advocated the practice of painting out-of-doors....