Oscar-Claude Monet (; ; 14 November 1840 – 5 December 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, soleil levant (
Impression, Sunrise), which was exhibited in 1874 in the first of the independent exhibitions mounted by Monet and his associates as an alternative to the
Salon de Paris.