France Archives - Light a Fire

SUMMARY: Claude Monet (14 November 1840-5 December 1926) Monet is famous for his Water Lilies painting among others.

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Claude Monet is famous for starting Impressionism with his many paintings. Initially he was a landscape painter but eventually moves onto realistic everyday things like water lilies, women in the park, and so on. He liked to focus on color and how light will bring out many different colors of everyday objects. Some of the paintings he is well-known for include trains, haystacks, and even the London skyline. Monet was able to form great friendships with other inspirational and influential painters like Renoir and Pisarro. Because Monet’s paintings were so desirable they were able to sell for a good price, allowing Monet to afford a nice home and to provide a comfortable life for his children.

Monet was born in 1840 to a singer for a mother and a grocer for a father. While his father desired that Monet take over the grocery business, Monet had other plans to pursue art. His love for charcoal drawing and passion for art allowed him to go to Le Havre secondary school of the arts. This was a great learning atmosphere for the up and coming artist as he was able to learn how to draw but was also taught how to use oil paints and was able to create impressive works of art. He became friends with many other artists at the school and may have been able to continue his education but the death of his mother at age 16 caused him to leave the school and move in with his aunt.

Monet’s aunt continued to support his passion for art and he was able to visit Paris and spend some time observing other painters at the Louvre. While he would watch them, he learned new styles of brushstrokes and colors and the impact of light. Fortunately he brought along his painting set with him and he too ended up joining the many other painters at the Louvre and he would sit and paint for hours. Monet ended up making a close friend while painting at the Louvre named Edouard Manet, another important name to art history.

Monet ended up joining the First Regiment of African Light Cavalry in Algeria in 1861 but he only served for 2 years as he had typhoid fever and his aunt helped to get him home to go back to art school. Monet became frustrated with the traditional styles of the schools and he left to become a freelance student of other famous artists like Charles Glevre and Pierre-Auguste Renoir. As he studied with other artists that helped to create the Impressionist art style he was able to learn unique brush stroke patterns along with the impact of light on daily objects. He liked to used broken colors and was eventually able to use real subjects in his paintings.

His wife, Camillie Doncieux was the model for some of his paintings of Camille and The Woman in the Green Dress. Monet’s wife gave birth to their first child shortly after his painting On the Bank of the Siene, Bennecourt was completed.

Monet fled France in 1870 and took his family to England to avoid the Franco-Prussian War. He was able to create impressive landscape paintings at this time and ended up studying other painters. Some of his works were rejected so Monet ended up taking his small family all over from the Netherlands to France where he continued to earn money as an impressionist painter.

Unfortunately for Monet his wife became ill and soon after giving birth to their second child she died at the age of 32. Monet painted her on her deathbed and continued to paint after her death. He was able to sell his paintings for a high cost and was able to have plenty of funds to purchase land in Giverny where he was able to paint Water Lilies. Many of his art has sold for millions of dollars, leaving Monet as one of the most historic painters of all time.

SUMMARY: Simone Weil (February 3, 1909 – August 24, 1943) French philosopher, Christian mystic, and social activist.
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Simone Weil (last name pronounced “Vay”) was a French philosophical writer and mystic, among other things. She is widely known for her resistance work and dedication to the plight of the working man.

Early life
Born in Paris, France, in 1909, Simone Weil was the daughter of Jewish parents and the brother of a famous mathematician, Andre Weil. Although she later converted to Christianity, at the age of 10 she became interested in politics and decided she would become a Bolshevik. She read communist party newspapers as a child and continued to oppose capitalist systems as an adult.

Labor organization and teaching
After graduating college, Simone began her teaching career as a philosophy teacher at a Secondary School for a year in Le Puy. Around the same time, she began to sympathize with laborers and organized a number of marches and other efforts to support. She would also work with them periodically between teaching to better understand their plight and experience life as a working class laborer.

Her work with labor organizations was affecting her teaching career, and by the time mid-terms came, her entire class was failing. At this point, after participating in a protest march, she was asked to step down from her teaching post, which she refused to do, so she was fired. After teaching in Le Puy, she began teaching philosophy in Roanne, continuing her work with the laborers as well. She taught free classes to those working in railroads and mines and also donated portions of her salary to their cause.

Eventually she ended her teaching career and went to live and work among unskilled labor workers, which was physically taxing on her and often left her out of money and food.

Many of Simone Weil’s teachings were published posthumously as the result of a student who took diligent notes while in her class, and then went on to publish them after her death. As a result, today we are able to better understand her views and teachings of philosophy at the time.

War efforts
While Simone Weil was a pacifist, she volunteered in the Spanish Civil War with the Republican Party in 1936. At this point her beliefs in Communism began to dissipate, and she began working for an anarchist trade movement, La Révolution Prolétarianne.

Although she was born Jewish, Simone Weil took a deep interest in Catholicism and converted to Christianity in 1938, although she refused to be baptized into the Catholic church throughout the remainder of her life. Regardless, when the Nazis occupied France, she then escaped to the United States, then England, in 1942. Her war efforts continued in England as she worked for the Free French movement for a period of time.

Circumstances surrounding death
When she was 34, Simone Weil died in Ashford. The circumstances surrounding her death have been the subject of speculation. While she had tuberculosis, she also refused food and medical treatment out of sympathy of those who were still in occupied France. Some believe she starved herself to death, while others believe she had a mental illness and her self-neglect led to her early death instead of recovering.

Simone Weil was a brilliant woman with a lot of sympathy who contributed much of her energy, time, and money to standing up for laborers who were treated unfairly and supporting the war cause.

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