Claude Monet is considered one of the most influential artists of all time. He is a founder of the French Impressionist art movement, and today his paintings sell for millions of dollars. While Monet was alive, however, his work was often criticized and he struggled financially. With over one hundred black-and-white illustrations, this book unveils a true portrait of the artist!
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.
Take a culinary journey in Monet’s footsteps with this book featuring recipes and photographs from his bucolic Normandy home—forward by Meryl Streep. Monet's Palate Cookbook brings to life Claude Monet's beloved kitchen garden at his exquisite home in Giverny, France. With sixty recipes drawn from Giverny’s farm-to-table tradition and the artist’s own cooking journals, the book explores Monet’s passion for gardening and includes detailed information about the herbs and vegetables he grew. On his two-acre vegetable garden, Monet grew zucchini, cherry tomatoes, radishes, pearl onions, brussels sprouts, asparagus, rosemary and mint. A few of the recipes are of French origin, such as the famous Normandy apple tart. Others are from locations abroad where he traveled, such as the Savoy Hotel in London where Monet acquired their recipe for Yorkshire pudding. Capturing Monet's lifestyle, Monet’s Palate Cookbook includes beautiful photographs by Steven Rothfeld, descriptions of the house interiors and gardens, French entertaining tips, and more.
Spanning the artist's entire career, this book explores Claude Monet's enduring relationship with nature and the landscapes he returned to again and again. Capturing fleeting natural impressions played a central role in the art of Claude Monet. He deeply engaged with the landscape and light of different places, from the metropolis of Paris to the Seine villages of Argenteuil and Giverny. This lavishly illustrated volume explores the development of Monet's art from the 1850s to the 1920s, focusing on the places, both at home and on his frequent travels, from which he drew inspiration for his painting. In addition, the book traces the critical shift in Monet's art that occurred when he began to focus on series of the same subjects such as haystacks, poplars, and the water lilies and pond at his meticulously designed garden in Giverny. Insightful and revealing, the book deepens our appreciation of Monet's art and allows us to experience anew his gift for bringing the natural world to life.
Considers Claude Monet's paintings of buildings in their environment, offering a reappraisal of an artist more often associated with landscapes, seascapes and gardens
In May of 2010, Gagosian Gallery presented the most significant gathering of late Claude Monet paintings in New York in more than thirty years. The catalogue for the exhibition that the New York Times described as "a gorgeous 'where on earth did this come from?' show," focuses on important subjects drawn from the artist's gardens at Giverny. Nymphéas, Le pont japonais, and L'allée de rosiers are among the most treasured paintings of Monet's long and prodigious career. Reproduced in luscious color are early Nymphéas that were first shown in 1909 at the Galerie Durand-Ruel to great critical acclaim. From these delicate, poetic paintings follow the more experimental post-1914 paintings, which were never exhibited during the artist's lifetime. In addition to the 27 sumptuous colour plates, the catalogue is illustrated by numerous colour images of paintings, as well as black-and-white historical photos. It includes a new essay by Paul Hayes Tucker, one of the foremost authorities on Monet and curator of the exhibition; an extract from Michel Butor's seminal 1962 text, "Monet, or the World Turned Upside Down" and a detailed chronology of Monet's life and exhibitions while at Giverny written by leading Monet scholar Charles Stuckey. Also included is a compendium of historical reviews that have been translated from their original French, Italian, or German language and which have been assembled for the first time by Claire Durand-Ruel Snollaerts.
This beautiful slipcased volume offers an intimate tour inside Monet’s home and through the idyllic Giverny garden that inspired his most iconic paintings. Monet first spotted the village of Giverny from the window of a train and then relocated to the rural haven outside Paris in 1883. Monet was an artist with a passion for painting landscapes and outdoor scenes, and the garden at Giverny soon became the Impressionist master’s greatest artistic accomplishment and a catalyst for his work. In 1890, Monet began renovating it, installing a picturesque water lily pond inspired by the Japanese prints he avidly collected. The setting of Monet’s Water Lilies series—his most famous works—it is now the most visited garden of its size in the Western world. The beautifully vivid illustrations of Monet’s paintings, his home, and the grounds give readers unprecedented access into the flowery paradise to which Monet dedicated the last forty years of his life. Lovers of garden design and Impressionist art are invited on an intimate tour via this handsome volume.
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.
