Monet exhibited in 5 of the 8 Impressionist exhibitions and suffered along with the rest of his group from hostility and lack of patronage. The 1880's were prolific years, but years of continued of poverty and depression. Not until 1889 did he have his first successful exhibition. He settled in Giverny in 1883 and except for a couple of trips abroad in his later years spent the rest of his life there. It was in Giverny that he created a lavish garden arranged elaborately with plants and flowers. This is where he created his famous water lily series of paintings. Monet who said he 'feared the dark more than death', died blind.


An excerpt form Monet by Trewin Copplestone:
Monet usually painted on standard-sized canvases with a white priming, a break from earlier tradition, in which forms and tones had been built up from dark to light on a dark-toned ground. However, although he said in 1920 that he "always insisted on painting on white canvases, in order to establish on them my scale of values," this state- ment is not entirely true; in fact he used a wide range of mid-toned primings, often a warm beige or light gray. From about 1860 the color of these primings became an element in the paintings, with small areas either being left unpainted or very lightly covered.

Monet always stood up to work, whether outdoors or in the studio, and he never believed his paintings were finished, frequently reworking them in the studio in spite of his often-stated belief in instantaneity. Except in the earlier works he did little or no under drawing or tonal under painting, beginning each painting with colors approximating to the finished ones, and working all over the canvas at the same time with long thin bristle brushes. His brushwork varied from painting to painting as well as through the course of his long career, but one of the main characteristics of his work, and of other members of the group, is the use of what is known as the tache, the method of applying paint in small opaque touches, premixed on the palette with the minimum of mixing medium. This provides a patchwork-like fabric of all-over color, described by Zola as an ensemble of delicate, accurate taches which, from a few steps back, give a striking relief to the picture."