Monet - In the Time of the Waterlilies ( The Musee Marmottan Monet Collections)

From his first sketches of Le Havre to his "amazing water lilies" from the garden at Giverny, the Musee Marmottan Monet has the world's finest collection of works by Claude Monet. At the same time as being a friend of the artists of his day with whom he shared the great adventure of Impressionism, Monet was an original and solitary painter, who told Clemenceau: "Ý...¨ all I did was look at what the world showed me, and record it by means of my brush".
Taking the 150 major works held by the museum as its thread, this book introduces us to the world of painters in the late 19Ýsuperscript th¨ century, and allows us to follow Monet's career step by step, from the caricatures in Normandy to the outstanding floral compositions painted at the end of his life. The authors have adopted a thematic approach: thus the portraits, journeys, seascapes and townscapes, or again the garden at Giverny, demonstrate the painter's manner in treating his favourite subjects. The part of the book devoted to the artists in the circle of Monet provides a panorama of the art of that period, and gives an idea of the immense range of the museum collections.