Author Description

Claude Monet lived in his beautiful house at Giverny for over 40 years, from 1883 until his death in 1926. Here he painted so many of his best-loved and most famous works, and here, with his second wife Alice Hoschede, he created the home and life-style that are so sumptuously portrayed in this book. Today the house, studios and gardens have been faithfully restored, and attract thousands of visitors every year. Family meals, special celebrations, luncheons with friends, picnics - all reflected the Monets' love of good food, combining superb ingredients from their beautiful walled kitchen-garden and from the Normandy countryside. In this book Clair Joyes, a leading authority on Monet and his work, provides a richly detailed picture of his private life, and combines it with Jean-Bernard Naudin's suburb photographic recreations of the meals at Giverny. In addition the book contains over 150 recipes drawn from Monet's own notebooks, many of them also beautifully photographed. The result is an incomparable insight into the lost world of the greatest of all Impressionist painters.