Author Description

Monet, with Cezanne and Van Gogh, is one of the mainstays of Modern Art. He created a revolution in the painting of his time, laid the foundations for a new perception of reality, which he analysed and fathomed with increasing intensity, prefiguring the liberties and audacities of abstract painting. In the same spirit as his previous essays devoted to Cezanne and to Van Gogh, in this book Jean-Jacques Leveque endeavours to examine Monet's evolution, from his first steps guided by the painter Boudin, pointing out the decisive influence of Turner, up to his elaboration of an art of pure sensation. We have here the different periods of an ardent, productive life, from the poverty of the dauber haunting the banks of the Seine, the Paris of his day, to the highly respected patriarch of Giverny whose garden became the complement to his palette. Painter and gardener, he ended his life in glory and the architecture of a major work of the twentieth century: the Nympheas.