He grew up in Le Havre, where the painter Eugène Boudin taught him to paint outdoors. In 1874 Monet and his friends held their own exhibition after being shut out of the official Salon.
A critic mocked his painting Impression, Sunrise, and the name Impressionists stuck. In later life, in his garden at Giverny, he painted his water lilies again and again, even as cataracts dimmed his sight.
Source: Wikipedia