The Art Book of the Year The Times A Telegraph Sunday Times Financial Times Economist
Tablet and Evening Standard Book of the Year A magnificent new biography of the founder of
Impressionism In the course of a long and exceptionally creative life Claude Monet
revolutionized painting and made some of the most iconic images in western art. Misunderstood
and mocked at the beginning of his career he risked everything to pursue his original vision.
Although close to starvation when he invented impressionism on the banks of the Seine in the
1860s-70s in the following decades he emerged as the powerful leader of the new painting in
Paris at one of its most exciting cultural moments. His symphonic series Haystacks Poplars
and Rouen Cathedral brought wealth and renown. Then he withdrew to paint only the pond in his
garden. The late Water Lilies ignored during his lifetime are now celebrated as pioneers of
twentieth century modernism. Behind this great and famous artist is a volatile voracious
nervous yet reckless man largely unknown. Jackie Wullschläger's enthralling biography based
on thousands of never-before translated letters and unpublished sources is the first account
of Monet's turbulent private life and how it determined his expressive sensuous sensational
painting. He was as obsessional in his love affairs as in his love of nature and changed his
art decisively three times when the woman at the centre of his life changed. Enduring
devastating bereavements he pushed the frontier of painting inward to evoke memory and the
passing of time. His work also responded intensely to outside cataclysms - the Dreyfus Affair
the First World War. Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau was his closest friend. Rich
intellectual currents connected him to writers from Zola to Proust affection and rivalry to
Renoir Pissarro and Manet. Monet said he was driven 'wild with the need to put down what I
experience'. This rich and moving biography immerses us in that passionate experience
transforming our understanding of the man his paintings and the fullness of his achievement.
