(FCE, NMT) B2 Famous Artists Reading: Multiple Matching (B2)

1 British-French Impressionist Claude Monet

Claude Monet was a French painter and one of the founders of Impressionism, a movement named after one of his own paintings, Impression, Sunrise. He was fascinated by the way light changed throughout the day and often painted the same subject, such as a haystack or a cathedral front, again and again at different times. In his later years he created an elaborate garden at Giverny, complete with a Japanese bridge and a pond full of water lilies, which became the subject of hundreds of canvases. Despite failing eyesight caused by cataracts, Monet went on painting into his eighties. His water lily series is now displayed in specially built oval rooms in a Paris museum.

This artist __________.

2 Renaissance master Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo da Vinci was an Italian painter, scientist and inventor who lived during the Renaissance. He is best remembered for two paintings, the Mona Lisa and the Last Supper, both considered masterpieces of Western art. Beyond painting, he filled notebooks with detailed sketches of flying machines, tanks and other devices that were centuries ahead of their time. He studied human anatomy so closely that his drawings are still used in medical teaching today. Da Vinci worked slowly and left many projects unfinished, yet his surviving works remain among the most studied paintings in history.

This artist __________.

3 Troubled genius Vincent van Gogh

Vincent van Gogh was a Dutch painter whose bold colours and swirling brushstrokes became hugely influential, although he received almost no recognition during his own lifetime. He struggled with poverty and mental illness for most of his adult life, and it is believed that he sold only a single canvas before he died. His brother Theo supported him financially and received hundreds of letters describing his ideas and struggles. Van Gogh painted feverishly in his final years, producing works such as The Starry Night and countless sunflower studies in a remarkably short space of time. He died in 1890 at the age of 37.

This artist __________.