Distracted and undisciplined, the young Monet was dismissed by both his teachers and his parents as not destined to amount to much; the boy's lack of interest in working in his father's grocery business further alienated him from the parental guidance that would have steered him down a structured academic path. His only interest, his art, became visible when Monet reached his teens; the young man gained a reputation for drawing caricatures of prominent persons and friends, a talent he had put to work to make money by the time he was fifteen.
Early Mentor Proves Major Influence
In 1856, when Monet was sixteen, he met the painter Eugene Boudin, who recognized the younger man's talent. Boudin took the young painter under his wing and imbued in him his own passion for painting outside, in plein air, where the beauty and intricacy of nature could truly be seen and captured. This love of working outside, coupled with the older painter's fascination with water, would inform all of Monet's works, and can be seen in his first major work, "View from Rouelles," which he painted at seventeen.
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