Postbooks: Monet at Giverny [Paperback]

Orion (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 30, 2001 | Series: Postbooks

When a greeting card just isn't enough...send something unique. It's as simple and inexpensive to mail as a card--but it's much more: an entire book to keep and treasure forever! Light as a feather, wonderfully personal, and colorfully visual, these small, self-enclosed little volumes go right into the mail with no wrapping required. Just write your dedication on the inside, address it on the back, seal the flap, stick on a stamp, and put it in the mailbox. Give one for holidays, for birthdays and anniversaries, for messages of cheer, or for any occasion when you want to remember friends and family. And, there's truly something for everyone: expressive dogs and cats for the animal lover; lush roses for the gardener; Monet's paintings for the art buff; a wine companion for the oenophile; and tributes to coffee, tea, chocolate, and more for the home chef--and Belle Époque nudes for...well, you know who! Each is a lasting value--for the recipient and the giver!

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Each of the attractively designed, compact, and well-illustrated hardcover books in this series deals with a specific facet of an artist's career. As with any series, the quality of the titles vary?though the translations from the German are all dotted with odd grammatical constructions and the occasional ambiguity. Sagner-Duchting's discussion of Claude Monet's work at Giverny is a good introduction to the artist's important contribution to Impressionism as well as a careful analysis of his great series of grain stacks and water lilies. Partsch focuses on Klimt's relationships with women?both as an artist and as a man?offering a good, detailed account of Klimt and Emilie Floge (a fashion designer and perhaps his true love). The one disappointment is the work on Rodin and Claudel. Schmoll is defensive about the attention and praise given sculptor Camille Claudel in recent years (often, admittedly, at the expense of Rodin). His portrayal of Claudel in this brief book is at times quite negative and at odds with the picture that has emerged from the work of Reine-Marie Paris (Camille Claudel, National Museum of Women in the Arts, 1990). The "Pegasus Library" aims to provide a focused study of one aspect of an artist's oeuvre in an inexpensive format. Previous subjects include Pablo Picasso, Marc Chagall, and Vasily Kandinsky (all LJ 11/1/94). Although individual titles may be of interest to libraries, the narrow focus and variations in quality make the series as a whole an optional purchase.?Martin R. Kalfatovic, Smithsonian Inst. Libs., Washington, D.C.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"The books have great subjects--some of the most famous images in all art--and they have something new to say about them...." --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 32 pages
• Publisher: Hachette (June 30, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1842020811
• ISBN-13: 978-1842020814
• Product Dimensions: 5.8 x 4 x 0.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #10,062,850 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Field of Impressions, July 9, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Monet in Giverny (Pegasus Library) (Hardcover)

During his last 40 years, Claude MONET AT GIVERNY pioneered modern art with his three painting series. Like the serial painting methods of Japanese woodcut artists Hiroshige's "Hundred views of Edo" and Hokusai's "Hundred views of Mt Fuji," the Giverny village area series painted the same or closely related subjects from different viewpoints and in different formats. The "Early morning on the Seine" series colored varying weather and followed changing light under influences from Eugene Boudin; Barbizon school artists Camille Corot and Charles-Francois Daubigny; and Johan Barthold Jongkind. As in the later waterlily paintings, water, light and reflection mixed natural and reflected realities so well as not to be able to tell the difference. The "Poplars" series brought to mind influences from Japanese woodcuts and Van Gogh while setting the stage for art nouveau's coordinated color series and decoratively two-dimensional line. Very 20th-century were the abstractly treated "Grain stacks" series and the open-ended, open-formed waterlily paintings alternating sky and water across huge formats without frames. Karin Sagner-Duchting gives beautiful examples for what she says in her clear text, so the book is a must for going on to Joachim Pissarro's MONET AND THE MEDITERRANEAN, William C. Seitz's CLAUDE MONET, and Paul Hayes Tucker's MONET AT ARGENTEUIL, MONET IN THE '90S and MONET IN THE 20TH CENTURY.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars AN INTIMATE LOOK AT THE INFLUENCE OF GIVERNY ON MONET, April 18, 2004

By 

Gail Cooke (TX, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Monet at Giverny (Pegasus Library) (Paperback)

When famed French Impressionist Claude Monet brought his family to Giverny, a small village northwest of Paris, he began the most productive period of his life.

Today millions visit the fabled gardens the artist helped design, where they are entranced by the ponds, landscapes, and bridges.

Although Monet's retreat has been described as simple and countrified, it was not at all humble. He enjoyed the services of six gardeners, a chauffeur, a cook, a washer woman, and a housemaid.

His love of entertaining and good food focused his attention on his yellow dining room decorated with Japanese woodcuts. For this area Monet designed color coordinated china - a sunny yellow with a soft blue trim.

This intimate look at the influence of Giverny on Monet and his work reveals another dimension of the artist's oeuvre.

3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Le champion des impressions, January 29, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Monet at Giverny (Pegasus Library) (Paperback)

Pendant ses 40 derniers decades, Claude Monet etait pionnier de l'art moderne. Il choisissait peindre des sujets villageois groupes en serie, de differents points de vue ou de formats distincts. La serie La Matinee sur la Seine s'agissait du temps et de la lumiere changeants, jusqu'a ne pas distinguer la realite et le reflet. La serie Les Peupliers presageaient les couleurs coordonnees et la ligne decorative 2-D de l'art nouveau. Les Meules et Les Nenuphars presageaient l'art abstrait et ouvertement fait. Car le ciel et l'eau y alternaient, dans les formats gigantesques et sans cadres.