Claude Monet was an important figure in the Impressionism that changed painting in the end of the 19 century. Follow in the pathway of the Barbizon, Monet accepted and widened their dedication to close up observation and naturalistic depiction. While the Barbizon artists painted only brief sketches en plein air, Monet frequently worked openly on significant canvases outdoors, then reworked and finished them in his studio. He brought a vibrant vividness to his paintings by unmediated colors, adding a variety of tones to his shadows, and preparing canvases with pale primers as a replacement for of the shady grounds used in conventional landscape paintings. Although Monet helped perpetrate the myth that he did not, and maybe even could not, draw, nearly 500 of more than 2,500 his works are sketchbooks, drawings and pastels. Works by Monet in pastel on paper are very rare – there are just over 100 known to exist.
