1840 Claude Oscar Monet is born at 45, Rue Lafitte, Paris, on 14 November, the second son of shopkeeper.

1845 Business is poor, and the family move to Le Havre, where Monet's father enters his brother-in-law Lecadre's business.

c. 1855 Monet's talent for drawing is apparent in caricatures of teachers and others.

1858 Meets the landscape artist Eugene Boudin (1824 - 1898) and paints in the open air with him.

1859 Monet goes to Paris to study art. He visit the Salon, and works at the Academie Suisse, where he meets Camille Pissaro (1830 - 1903).

1860 Monet is called up, and elects to serve with the Chasseurs d'Afrique in Algeria, but is discharged on grounds of illhealth the following year.

1862 On holiday in Normandy he meets Johan Barthold Jongkind (1819 - 1891). Once Monet's health is restored, his family buys him out of the army, and in November he returns to Paris and enters the studio of artist Charles Gleyre (1806 - 1874). There he meets Auguste Renoir (1841 - 1919), Alfred Sisley (1839 - 1899) and Frederic Bazille (1841 - 1870)

1863 Monet and his new friends paint in the Forest of Fountainebleau. At the end of the year, all four leave Gleyre's studio.

1865 The Salon accept two Monet marine paintings. He plan an immens Dejeuner sur l'herbe for the nest Salon and starts work on it in the Forest of Fountainebleu immedietly.

1866 Lady In The Green Dress is exhibited at the Salon and well recieved. Monet spends summer and autumn with his family at Sainte-Adresse and Honfleur.

1867 Again he summers with his parents, whileCamille gives birth to their first son Jean in Paris. back in Paris, Bazille shares his studio with Monet and buys Women In The Garden, which the Salon has turned down, by instalment.

1868 Works at Etretat and Fecamp. Gaudibert, a ship owner, helps Monet through financial difficulties from 1864 on, and now gives him commissions and redeems pawned picture.

1870 Again rejected by the Salon. 26 June: marries Camille Doncieux. On the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian war a month later, Monet moves to London, where the news of Bazille's death reaches him on November. In London he meets art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel.

1871. 17 January: Monet's father dies, leaving a modest legacy. In the autumn Monet returns to France via Holland, and rents a house and garden at Argenteuil.

1872 Durand-Ruel buys a large selection of paintings. Monet creates his studio boat and paints Impression, Sun Rising . Second visit to Holland.

1873 Works quietly at Argenteuil, where he meets Gustave Caillebotte (1848 - 1894). The Societe Anonyme Cooperative d'Artistes-Peintres, -Sculpteurs, -Graveurs, etc. is founded to put on group shows. The members include the core Impressionists.

1874 The first group exhibition is held in the rooms of Nadar, the photographer, in Boulevard des Capucines, Paris. leroy takes the title of Impression, Sun Rising as a platform in an article deriding artists who merely presented impressions rather than finished artworks. The sho is fiasco, and the Societe Anonyme is disolved at the end of the year.

1875 In financial difficulty again, Monet moves to a smaller house.

1876 At the second Impressionist show in Durand-Ruel 's gallery, Monet exhibits 18 paintings. He meets department-store director Ernest Hoschede, whos commissions panels for a room in his chateau, Rotternbourg, near Montgeron This year and the next, Monet paints the Gare Saint-Lazare.

1878 Birth of the Monets' second son, Michel, in Paris. In the summer, the family move to a small house at Vetheuil, where Alice Hoschede and her six children joins them. The money problem continue.

1879 Caillebotte funds the fourth group exhibition. Monet paints at Vetheuil and Lavacourt. 5 September: Camille dies at the age of 32.

1881 Durand-Ruel buys more Monets and assists Monet in his travels. In December Monet, Alice Hoscede and their children move to Poissy.

1883 Monet's solo exhibition at Durand-Ruel's is well recieved but does not result in many sales. Durand-Ruel commissions decorative work for his Paris home. Monet rents the house at Giverny, and in December goes to the south of France with Renoir.

1848 January to April: painting on the Riviera.

1886 Revisits Holland. In the Autumn he paints at Etretat and in Brittany, where he meets his biographer-to-be, Gustave Geffroy.

1887 Durand-Ruel opens a New York gallery and exhibits Monet's works there. A Monet show at Georges Petit's in Paris, where he already exhibited in 1885, is a great success.

1888 From January to April he works on the Cote d'Azur and in summer revisits London. Back in France, he refuses the Cross of the Legion of Honour. Begins the Haystacks series.

1889 Georges Petit mounts a highly successful joint show of Monet and Auguste Rodin (1840 - 1917). Monet orrganizes a collection to buy Manet's Olympia from his widow, for the Louvere.

1890 Works on the Haystacks and begin the Poplars series. Buys the Giverny house where he has been living since 1883.

1891 The Haystacks exhibition at Durand-Rue's is a great success. December: painting in London.

1892 Springs: works on the Rouen Cathedral series. Earnest Hoschede having died the previous year. Monet and Alice Hoschede marry in July.

1895 Monet visits his stepson in Norway. In March, Durand-Ruel exhibits the Rouen Cathedral series.

1896 Working in Normandy again, at Varengeville, Dieppe and Pourville. Begins his series Morning by the Seine.

1897 January to March: at Pourville. Build a second studio at Giverny. In the summer, his son marries his stepsister Blanche Hoschede. The second Venice Biennale includes 20 Monets.