From award-winning author Ross King comes a stunning portrait of legendary artist Claude Monet and the story behind his most memorable project: Water Lilies.
In early 1914, French newspapers reported that Claude Monet, one of the world's richest and most celebrated painters, had retired at the age of 73. His beloved wife, Alice, and his eldest son, Jean, had died. His keen vision, which Cézanne called "the most prodigious eye in the history of painting," was threatened by cataracts. And yet, despite his frail health, Monet returned to painting, on a scale more ambitious than ever.
Monet is perhaps the most recognized artist in the world. Among his most celebrated creations are the Water Lilies from his garden at Giverny. Seeing them in museums around the world, fans are drawn by the power of Monet's brushes into a world of harmonious nature; Monet himself intended the water lilies to provide a "haven of peaceful meditation." However, as Ross King reveals in this masterful account of the artist and his work, these beautiful paintings convey the intense frustration Monet experienced with the difficulties of capturing the effects of light, water, and color. They also reflect the terrible personal suffering the artist endured in the final years of his life.
Monet and the Water Lilies tells the story behind the creation of these memorable works, as the horrors of World War I approached Paris and Giverny ever faster, and a new generation of artists, led by Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso, questioned the achievements of Impressionism.
