|
Claude Monet was born November 14, 1840 in Paris, France. Monet was the leader
of a group of French artists called the "Impressionists," which included such
painters as Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Camille Pissarro.
Monet's family moved to the port town of Le Havre in 1845. He took his early
art lessons from the painter, Eugene Boudin. Boudin, who worked up sketches
out-of doors, encouraged Monet to do the same. "Suddenly the veil was torn away....
My destiny as a painter opened out to me," he later said. For the next 60+ years
Monet explored the effects of light on outdoor scenes. He was the first artist
to let his initial impressions stand as completed works, rather than as "notes"
done in preparation for work in the studio.
Monet moved to Paris in 1859, where he met and befriended Pissarro and Edouard
Manet. He married in 1870, and in 1871 settled in Argenteuil. He fixed up a
boat with an easel and painted his way up and down the Seine River, capturing
his impressions of the interplay of light, water and atmosphere.
In 1874 Monet and a group of painters including Pissarro and Renoir banded
together to form a society of artists. They gave a public exhibition of their
work at the studio of a Paris photographer. Monet exhibited a painting called
"Impression: Sunrise." His painting gave the group its name, coined in derision
by critic Louis Leroy referring to the entire exhibition as "Impressionistic."
Despite the financial failure of this first exhibit, the Impressionist continued
to exhibit together until 1886. Monet slowly achieved recognition in the years
after the Impressionists disbanded. In 1883, he settled in Giverny, France and
continued to paint, and explore his fascination with light until his death on
December 5, 1926. Ravensburger HistoryRavensburger Spieleverlag GmbH is a German game company and market leader in the European jigsaw puzzle market.
The company was founded by Otto Robert Maier with seat in Ravensburg, a town in Upper Swabia in southern Germany. He began publishing in 1883 with his first author contract. He started publishing instruction folders for craftsmen and architects, which soon acquired him a solid financial basis. His first board game appeared in 1884, named "Journey around the world".
At the turn of the 20th century, his product line broadened to include picture books, books, children’s activity books, Art Instruction manuals, non-fiction books, and reference books as well as children’s games, Happy Families and activity kits. In 1900, the Ravensburger blue triangle trademark was registered with the Imperial Patent office. As of 1912, many board and activity games had an export version that was distributed to Western Europe, the countries of the Danube Monarchy as well as Russia.
Before the First World War, Ravensburger had around 800 products. The publishing house was damaged during the Second World War and continued to produce games in the years of the reconstruction. The company focused on children's games and books and specialized books for art, architecture and hobbies, and from 1962 grew strongly. The company started to produce jigsaw puzzle games in 1964, and in the same year opened subsidiaries in Austria, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. In 1977 the company split into a book publishing arm and a game publishing arm.
Today there are approximately 1,800 available books and 850 games as well as puzzles, hobby products and CD-ROM titles at Ravensburger and its subsidiaries, which include Alea for "hobby and ardent game players" and FX Schmid for games and children's books. Ravensburger products are exported to more than fifty countries.
In September 2010, Ravensburger broke Educa's record for the world's largest jigsaw puzzle of 24,000 pieces. Ravensburger's new puzzle design by late pop artist Keith Haring titled, 'Keith Haring: Double Retrospect' breaks the Guinness Book of World Records measuring 17' × 6' built from 32,256 pieces and comes with its own dolly cart for toting. |
