French artist’s model of noted family who eventually was sole heir to the estate of his father, the famous painter Claude Monet and his mother, Camille Doncieux Monet.
Monet was the youngest of Claude and Camille Monet’s two sons. His mother’s already failing health worsened after his birth, and she died on 5 September 1879, probably of uterine cancer. Michel’s elder brother, Jean, was born in 1867.
Since 1877, the year of Ernest Hoschedé’s bankruptcy, Alice Hoschedé and her six children had been living with the Monets. The two families moved from Paris to Vétheuil in August 1878, and after Camille’s death in 1879, Monet, Alice and the eight children, continued living together. In 1881, they moved to Poissy and, in April 1883, to Giverny. Alice managed the household and supervised the education of the Monet and Hoschedé children.
Michel Monet and his step-brother Jean-Pierre Hoschedé served in the French Army during World War I.
Michel Monet married Gabrielle Bonaventure in 1927. The couple had no children. Gabrielle died on 2 February 1964.
When Claude Monet died in 1926, as his sole heir, Michel inherited the entire estate. Michel never spent time in Giverny, and Blanche Hoschedé Monet, his stepsister and sister-in-law, became the caretaker of the house and garden until her death in 1947.
In 1966, Michel Monet left to the Musée Marmottan Monet his collection of his father’s work, thus creating the world’s largest collection of Monet paintings.
Michel Monet, a car enthusiast, died in a car crash in Vernon on 3 February 1966, a few weeks before his 88th birthday. He had bequeathed the estate to the Académie des beaux-arts.
Link to Wikipedia biography