2 A Rocky Start

Chapter 2 A Rocky Start Monet was sent to Algeria in northern Africa. He loved the heat and the light. He thought it was romantic to sleep in a tent in the desert.

Men were supposed to serve in the French army

for seven years. But after two years, Monet caught typhoid fever and was sent home on sick leave.

That summer, in Le Havre, Monet continued to paint outdoors. He met a Dutch artist—Johan Barthold Jongkind—who, like Boudin, painted outdoors. Jongkind and Boudin were his schoolmasters, Monet said later.

Monet's aunt thought that his finished paintings looked like rough sketches. But she saw how hard Claude worked. So she paid the government to let Claude out of the army for good. Then she packed him off to Paris. His father promised him an allowance if he studied with a proper art teacher. So Monet tried more art classes. Monet's new teacher thought that he was a very good artist. However, he wanted Claude to make the models better looking than they really were. If their feet were too big, he thought Claude should

make them smaller. Monet did not agree. Not at all! He thought you should paint what you saw. Nor did he like painting inside a crowded, noisy studio. But something wonderful came out of these classes. Three of the students—Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley, and Frédéric Bazille—became close friends of Claude's. For years, they all worked together. Bazille was a medical student. His parents paid for his art classes as long as he kept up with medical school. Renoir had started work as a china painter when he was only thirteen. Like Monet, he had saved enough money to come to Paris. Sisley was the lucky one, they all said. He was English. His father was a business-man in Paris and paid for his son's art studies without conditions.