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Claude Monet () also known as Oscar-Claude Monet or Claude Oscar Monet (14 November 1840 - 5 December 1926) Biography of Claude Monet giverny.org. Retrieved 6 January 2007. was a founder of French impressionist painting, and the most consistent and prolific practitioner of the movement's philosophy of expressing one's perceptions before nature, especially as applied to plein-air landscape painting.House, John, et al.: Monet in the 20th Century, page 2. Yale University Press, 1998. The term Impressionism is derived from the title of his painting Impression, Sunrise.

Vincent Willem van Gogh (30 March 1853 ? 29 July 1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionist artist. He was a pioneer of Expressionism with enormous influence on 20th century art, especially on the Fauves and German Expressionists. Some of his paintings are now among the world's best known, most popular and expensive works of art.

Van Gogh spent his early adult life working for a firm of art dealers. After a brief period as a teacher, he became a missionary worker in a very poor mining region. He did not begin his career as an artist until he was about 27; however during the last ten years of his life, he produced more than 2,000 pieces, including around 900 paintings and 1,100 drawings and sketches. He worked only with sombre colours until he encountered Impressionism and Neo-Impressionism in Paris. Van Gogh incorporated their brighter colours and style of painting into a uniquely recognizable style, which he had fully developed by the time he spent at Arles, France. Most of his best-known works were produced during his final two years, amid the recurrent bouts of mental illness which led to his eventual suicide at the age of 37.

A central figure in Van Gogh's life was his brother Theo, who continually and selflessly provided financial support. Their lifelong friendship is documented in numerous letters they exchanged from August 1872 onwards.