Finding a Paintbrush in a Field of Poppies

Saturday we got on a bus at 08:54 to set our for Giverny, about an hour from where we are staying in Paris. While in and out of sleep, Prof. Zabala told of of the life of Claude Monet, one of the world's most famous impressionism painters. 

Here's the brief version of his personal life. Trust me, it is way more interesting than Keeping Up with the Kardashian's or any of that asinine trash (sorry about it). So here we go, for a good portion of his life, Monet lived his life in great poverty. Against his parent's wishes, he married Camille Doncieux, a French model of Monet's that was even poorer than himself. 

In the years following their marriage, Claude and Camille had two sons, Jean and Michel. I'm going to skip to the interesting part now. So after a while of trying to sell his work, Monet met Ernest & Alice Hoschedé, wealthy department store owners, who began to commission him for his paintings. Alice ended up become his mistress (which is unfortunately not at all surprising). 
So somewhere down the road, something went terribly wrong and Hoschedé went bankrupt and could no longer afford to support Monet. This is where is gets amusingly strange. As the Hoschedé family was now very poor, Monet offered to let Alice and her children live with him, Camille, and their two sons. Yeah, not at all weird having your wife and kids plus your mistress and her kids all in the same house. And oh, this is where I should probably mention that Alice and Ernest had SIX children together. SIX. So now in the Monet household there were TWELVE mouths to feed...super smart considering that Monet's biggest supporter was now bankrupt. Anyway, things ended up working out strangely well for this almost polygamous household. I mean, not well - Camille ended up dying of cervical cancer while also having tuberculosis, but they were able to get along (from what I heard) and make ends meet. That's pretty much it, but amiright that this is way better than reality TV?

Side note: an even weirder family relationship fact about the Monet-Hoschedé household was that one of Alice and Ernest's daughters (so Monet's step-daughter) ended up marrying his son Jean. Not weird at all.

Anyway I should probably talk about Monet's art. Monet, unlike many of his competitors in that era, preferred to paint while in nature compared to while in the traditional studio setting. After the death of Camille and marriage to Alice, Monet ended up coming into a LOT of money from his paintings. He was able to move his huge family into an adorable little house in Giverny, where he began to create a great, great, great masterpiece: his garden. This became the basis for a vast number of his most famous paintings including his water lily collection, Nymphéas, The Japanese Footbridge, and more.

Now, years after his passing, his house and his garden have both been completely maintained. It became a museum opened to public visit in 1980. It is basically the most beautiful place on the entire planet. Enough talk, here are the pictures.

 Oh and one thing that's kind of interesting is Monet was obsessed with Japanese art. I didn't take any pictures of this, so I guess you'll just have to take my word for it. But seriously its all over his house.