Monet the Triumph of ImpressionismNo other artist, apart from J. M. W. Turner, tried as hard as Claude Monet (1840 1926) to capture light itself on canvas. Of all the Impressionists, it was the man Czanne called "only an eye, but my God what an eye!" who stayed true to the principle of absolute fidelity to the visual sensation, painting directly from the object. It could be said that Monet reinvented the possibilities of color. Whether it was through his early interest in Japanese