Monet, the father of French impressionist painting, devoted twenty-five years to a series of paintings of the water lilies that floated in the pond of his lavish garden in Giverny. This volume is dedicated to those paintings, and opens with a biography of Monet that links the artist’s childhood passion for nature and for drawing to his later fascination with light. Monet’s experiments with how to best capture light and its effect on the sky and on water at different times of the day include paintings such as Impression, Sunrise (1872), which inspired the name of the impressionist movement. A critical text analyzes Monet’s ingenuity, audacity, and modernity, as well as his influence on other artists, from Zao Wou-ki to music to Shirley Goldfarb. This definitive catalog is completed by 210 color reproductions of the water lily paintings with annotated captions, period shots of Giverny by photographers such as Cartier-Bresson, and rare documents including Monet’s personal letters to his optometrist regarding his failing eyesight, which has been linked to his development of the impressionist style. The large-format volume features an eight-page gatefold of the murals at the Orangerie in Paris, and it serves as both an accessible introductory work and a complete reference guide to an important component in the history of art.

including the destruction of two works in a fire in 1958 - and underscores the resonance of these paintings with the art and artists of the last half-century." --Book Jacket.

Claude Monet's water lily paintings are among the most iconic and beloved works of art of the past century. Yet these entrancing images were created at a time of terrible private turmoil and sadness for the artist. The dramatic history behind these paintings is little known; Ross King's Mad Enchantment tells the full story for the first time and, in the process, presents a compelling and original portrait of one of our most popular and cherished artists. By the outbreak of war in 1914, Monet, then in his mid-seventies, was one of the world's most famous and successful painters, with a large house in the country, a fleet of automobiles and a colossal reputation. However, he had virtually given up painting following the death of his wife Alice in 1911 and the onset of blindness a year later. Nonetheless, it was during this period of sorrow, ill health and creative uncertainty that – as the guns roared on the Western Front – he began the most demanding and innovative paintings he had ever attempted. Encouraged by close friends such as Georges Clemenceau, France's dauntless prime minister, Monet would work on these magnificent paintings throughout the war years and then for the rest of his life. So obsessed with his monumental task that the village barber was summoned to clip his hair as he worked beside his pond, he covered hundreds of yards of canvas with shimmering layers of pigment. As his ambitions expanded with his paintings, he began planning what he intended to be his legacy to the world: the 'Musée Claude Monet' in the Orangerie in Paris. Drawing on letters and memoirs and focusing on this remarkable period in the artist's life, Mad Enchantment gives an intimate portrayal of Claude Monet in all his tumultuous complexity, and firmly places his water lily paintings among the greatest achievements in the history of art.

Published in connection with an exhibition held at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Apr. 9-Aug. 7, 2011, the Saint Louis Art Museum, Oct. 2, 2011-Jan. 22, 2012, and the Cleveland Museum of Art, 2015.

Claude Monet (1840-1926) was one of the first artists to move his studio out into the open air, creating works which continue to fascinate and inspire us today as much as they did his contemporaries. One of the founding fathers of Impressionist art, Monet's works consistently reflect the artist's profound love of nature. Many of his paintings were directly inspired by the gardens that played such an important role in his life--the garden at his house in S¿vres in the 1860s, those at his two homes in Argenteuil in the 1870s, followed by a garden at his estate in Vatheuil. Yet the most famous of Monet's gardens was the expansive park in Giverny, which inspired his masterful handling of light and color for more than thirty years and provided motifs for hundreds of individual paintings and series that remain immensely popular today--among them the masterpieces of his Water-Lilies series. This magnificent volume of full-page color plates is devoted to this central theme in the work of the French artist. It presents landscapes, still lifes, and portraits of people in natural settings from nearly all of Monet's creative periods--from his early Impressionist paintings of the 1870s to the Grandes Dacorations of the early 1900s. Also included are photographs of Monet's gardens, diagrammatic recreations of these spaces (based on the artist's paintings), several bills of delivery and planting instructions from horticulturalists.

'It took me a long time to understand my water lilies,' Monet wrote of his pond at Giverny. 'I had planted them for the pure pleasure of it, and I grew them without thinking of painting them...And then, all of a sudden, I had the revelation of the enchantment of my pond. I took up my palette. Since then I've had no other model.' The pond became Monet's most enduring motif, the water lilies the most celebrated flowers he ever painted. This book tells the story of their role as a central source of artistic inspiration, bringing exciting insights into Monet's work as a gardener and painter. Vivian Russell also describes the making of the water garden which, in contrast to the flower garden, was to be meditative and mysterious, in tune with the Japanese aesthetic. She reveals how Monet chose his water lilies from plants bred specially by Joseph Bory Latour-Marliac at his nursery near Bordeaux. Her superb photographs capturing the ephemeral beauty of the flowers, and the way they appear to float on clouds and undulating rushes, portray the changing moods of the pond, complementing Monet's own serene poems to light.

Can Katie capture the magic of the Monet masterpieces? There's an art competition at the gallery and Katie is desperate to win. All she has to do is paint a picture in the style of Claude Monet. Surely Katie can manage that ... can't she?

An introduction to famous works of impressionist art, each of which bears a textured element.

Monet and the Waterlily Friends is a picture book that introduces readers to the colorful world of art. The book has three sections: The first section is a story in strictly images for non-readers to enjoy. The second section serves as a mini art history lesson about Monet and Impressionism. The third section is a collection of art activities that can be done at home or in the classroom.

Commentary and reproductions of Monet's works that include 65 color plates, (36 with fold-out pages for added width), and 20 black and white illustrations.