Customer Reviews

Monet: The Father of Impressionism--His Life in Paintings

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If you are in love with Claude Monet's Water Lily Pond paintings, this is the best book for an explanation as to their origins and where Monet found his inspiration. There is a photograph from 1926 showing the bridge covered with climbing plants.

The Japanese Bridge at Giverny, 1924 is just one of the outstanding paintings in a series of works devoted to the bridge that preoccupied Monet during his final years.

Monet loved his garden at Giverny with such a passion that one could say it bordered on obsession. Harmony in Green, The White Water Lilies, The Water Lily Pond are all explained in detail. There is even a picture of Monet photographed in his beloved garden in 1917.

In every life there is beauty and sadness. The beauty of the water lilies contrasts with the pain Monet felt when he painted Camille on her death bed.

When Monet's wife died, she not only left him without a companion, he then had small children depending on him. He spent most of his meager earnings on his wife's medical treatments and he was also deeply depressed and alone.

This type of revealing information makes him so very human and the paintings then contain a certain depth when these secrets are revealed.

~The Rebecca Review

This is a highly enjoyable and readable work. It focuses on the work of Monet and provides a wide- range of excellent color reproductions. It also does an outstanding job of presenting the cultural and historical background to Impressionism.
For some reason it does not however tell us about the internal Monet, his thought, his view of the close relationships in his life.
Its strength is its giving a clear and careful illustrated description of Monet's development as an artist. His effort to catch the reality of the moment and to paint the precise colors of the reality he was seeing led to the production of many works of unusual brilliance and originality. Along with Manet, Renoir, Pissarro , Sisley, Morisot he made the world see itself in a more shimmering colorful and bright way.
It is often said that of all movements in Art History it is the work of the Impressionists which are most beloved. Monet was at the center of this revolution in light and color as this fine little volume shows.