Claude Monet
印象派代表人物——克劳德·莫奈

Claude Monet (1840-1926) 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 , which was exhibited in 1874 in the first of the independent exhibitions mounted by Monet and his associates.
克劳德·莫奈(1840－1926)是法国印象主义绘画的鼻祖，也是印象主义运动中最坚定和最多产的画家。印象主义的哲学思想是在自然面前表达认知观念，这一理念尤其被应用到了外光派风景绘画。“印象主义”一词源自莫奈一幅绘画的标题《印象·日出》，这幅作品于1874年在莫奈和他的合伙人举行的首批独立展览上展出。

Monet's ambition of documenting the French countryside led him to adopt a method of painting the same scene many times in order to capture the changing of light and the passing of the seasons. From 1883 Monet lived in Giverny, where he purchased a house and property, and began a vast landscaping project which included lily ponds that would become the subjects of his best-known works. In 1899 he began painting the water lilies, first in vertical views with a Japanese bridge as a central feature, and later in the series of large-scale paintings that was to occupy him continuously for the next twenty years of his life.
莫奈志在记录法国的乡村生活，于是他采用了对同一场景多次描绘的方法，以捕捉光线的变幻和季节的变迁。莫奈从1883年起居住在吉维尼，他在那里购置了房屋和地产，并开始了庞大的景观美化工程，其中包括建设荷塘——后来它成了莫奈很多著名作品的主题。1899年起，他开始画睡莲，首先采用垂直视角，将一条日式桥置于中央。接下来的20年里，他又连续创作了一系列大型作品。

Impression, Sunrise was painted in 1872, depicting a Le Havre port landscape. From the painting's title the art critic Louis Leroy, in his review, L'Exposition des Impressionnistes , which appeared in Le Charivari , coined the term “Impressionism”. It was intended as disparagement but the Impressionists appropriated the term for themselves.
《印象·日出》创作于1872年，描绘了勒阿弗尔港口的景色。艺术评论家路易斯·勒罗伊就这幅画写了一篇评论《印象主义画家阐述》，刊登于《喧闹报》，在这篇文章里他创造了“印象主义”一词。这个词本来表达的是轻蔑意味，但印象主义画家却欣然采用了该名称。