Monet

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 Jackie Wullschläger's enthralling biography, based on thousands of never-before translated letters and unpublished sources, is the first account of Monet's turbulent private life and how it determined his expressive, sensuous, sensational painting.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. This Full, Personal Biography Brings To Life The Unknown Man Behind The Famous Artist. Jackie Wullschlager Traces Claude Monet's Turbulent Emotional Life And How It Informed His Paintings. Using Unpublished And Never-before Translated Sources, Jackie Beautifully Tells Monet's Life As He Felt It: His Pleasures And Sadness, His Loves And Disappointments, What He Thought And What He Felt, And How All This Inspired His Choices Of What And How To Paint. Wullschlager Argues That Three Times, Monet's Art Changed Decisively When The Woman Sharing His Life Changed. She Excavates The Barely Recognized Contributions And The Voices Of Camille Doncieux, Alice Raingo And Blanche Hoschedé, And The Special Atmosphere Which Each Brought To Monet's Homes And To His Art. She Argues That They Do Not Diminish The Force Of Monet's Originality, But Instead Encourage Us To Rethink How He Worked, And How His Paintings Still Work On Us. Impressionisms Radical Impulse To Interiority Was Shaped By Monet's Intensity Of Emotion, His Insistence On Painting What He Called 'what I Myself Experience, What I Alone' And Also His Rich Intellectual Life And Connections To Writers From Zola To Proust. This Is A Story About Changing Ideals Of Beauty, About Originality And Creativity, Resilience And Survival.