Paris Beckons

By 1859, Claude had made a crucial decision: he would become a professional artist. This declaration precipitated a family crisis. His father, while not entirely unsympathetic to his son's artistic leanings, insisted that if Claude wished to pursue art, he must do so properly, through academic channels. A compromise was reached—Claude would go to Paris to study, with a modest allowance from his father, on the condition that he enroll in a respectable art school and follow a traditional course of study.

Armed with letters of introduction from Boudin and a small collection of his own works, nineteen-year-old Claude Monet set off for Paris in the spring of 1859. He was entering a city that was the undisputed center of the art world, home to the prestigious École des Beaux-Arts, the annual Salon exhibitions, and a thriving community of artists, critics, and dealers. It was also a city in the midst of transformation under Napoleon III and Baron Haussmann, with ancient neighborhoods being demolished to make way for broad boulevards and modern buildings.

Claude's first stop was the Salon, the annual exhibition that represented the pinnacle of artistic achievement in France. Walking through the crowded galleries, he studied works by the established masters—history paintings by Ingres, romantic landscapes by Delacroix, the emerging realist works of Courbet. But he also sought out the paintings of the Barbizon School—Corot, Daubigny, Troyon—artists who, like Boudin, worked directly from nature and emphasized atmospheric effects over precise detail.

Rather than enrolling at the École des Beaux-Arts as his father wished, Claude chose to study at the Académie Suisse, a free studio where artists could work from live models without the rigid instruction of the official school. This decision was characteristic of Monet's independent spirit—he wanted to learn, but on his own terms, without sacrificing his growing conviction that art should capture the immediate sensation of nature rather than conform to academic formulas.