Claude Monet was born in Paris in 1840 and grew up in Le Havre, on the Normandy coast, where he learned to paint outdoors. In 1874 he showed Impression, Sunrise at the first exhibition of the group critics went on to call the Impressionists.

From 1883 he lived at Giverny. Ten years later he dug the water-lily pond you see in lots 10 and 15. He often went back to one subject at another hour or season: stacks of wheat in a field, the bridges of London, the pond. He died at Giverny in 1926.