Winner of the Elizabeth Longford Prize and the Franco-British Society Literary Award
Shortlisted for the Duff Cooper Prize 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translated letters and unpublished sources is the first account of Monet's turbulent private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.
