Impressionism’s founding father   Claude Monet (1840–1926), the most individual Impressionist painter, dedicated his long life to a pictorial exploration of the sensations which reality, and in particular landscape, offers the human eye. In his endeavor to capture the ever-changing face of reality, Monet went beyond Impressionism and thereby beyond the confines of self-contained panel painting: in Giverny he painted the Poplars, Grain Stacks and Rouen Cathedral