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Postbooks: Monet at Giverny

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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.

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.

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.