Oscar-Claude Monet (1840-1926), or simply Monet, was born in Paris but raised in Normandy, France. His father wanted him to go into the family grocery business, but Monet wanted to become an artist. Already an aspiring painter as a teenager, Monet traveled back to Paris to visit the Louvre where he witnessed painters copying from the old masters. Having brought his paints and other tools with him, he would instead go and sit by a window and paint what he saw. Remaining in Paris for several years, Monet joined other likeminded artists and became one of the founders of French Impressionist painting. He was the most consistent and prolific practitioner of the movement's philosophy of expressing one's perceptions before nature. Monet's ambition of documenting the French countryside led him to adopt a method of painting the same scene many times in order to capture the changing of light and the passing of the seasons. After achieving some success, Monet moved to Giverny, France in 1883 where he purchased a house and property, and began a vast landscaping project which included lily ponds that would become the subjects of his best-known works. In 1899 he began painting the water lilies, first in vertical views with a Japanese bridge as a central feature, and later in the series of large-scale paintings that was to occupy him continuously for the next 20 years of his life.