Oscar-Claude Monet was born on November 14, 1840 in Paris.  He spent his childhood in the Normandy coastal town of Le Havre, where his father prospered as a grocer and ship chandler.  In 1860 Monet met the landscape artist Eugène Boudin, who introduced him to plein-air painting, and he began to produce increasingly ambitious and naturalistic work.

In 1859, Monet moved to Paris, where he attended the Académie Suisse beginning in 1860.  He returned to Le Havre in 1862, and worked in the plein-air mode alongside Eugene Boudin and Dutch painter Johan Barthold Jongkind.  In 1862 he returned to Paris to enroll in the studio of Charles Gleyre, where his fellow students included Frédéric Bazille and Alfred Sisley.  Despite some success, financial difficulties forced Monet to return to his family in Le Havre.

In 1878, with financial troubles looming and his wife gravely ill, the Monets embarked on an unorthodox joint household arrangement in Vétheuil.  By 1890 Monet was financially secure enough to purchase a house at Giverny, later adding adjacent land and installing both a water-lily garden and Japanese bridge, which he would later paint in.