MONET: THE MASTERWORKS.

Bracken Books. Very Good/Very Good. 1986. Hard Cover. Folio 1851701400 Very heavy book, standard charge within the UK, no extra postage will be asked for. Due to weight we can only supply this book to a UK address. Dust jacket complete. 144 pages, 48 full colour plates of Monet Paintings. When Monet started painting, Delacroix had only just died, Ingres and Corot were still working, and Courbet was at the peak of his career. By the time Monet was painting his last Waterlily series the art world had seen great changes; Kandinsky was teaching at the Bauhaus, Matisse and Picasso had achieved worldwide recognition. Although a member of the artistic circle that enjoyed meeting and debating theories of art in the cafes of Paris, Monet himself was not a theorist, preferring to work intuitively, out of doors, directly onto his canvas. His life can be divided into three periods - Argenteuil, Vetheuil, and Giverny, but these indicate only the places where he lived, not the great turning points in his development. This lively account of his career demonstrates that it was one long adventure of discovery, from his earlier anecdotal paintings to his later sequential paintings, in which he explored the effect of light at different times and seasons upon one motif, most notably in Rouen Cathedral, The Haystacks, and his mighty Waterlily subjects. Also outlined in this volume is the struggle for recognition endured by the group of artists with whom Monet aligned himself, and whose name, the Impressionists, was pejoratively attributed to them by a satirical critic upon seeing Monet's painting Impression: Sunrise at the first exhibition of the group's work as a new artistic movement in 1874. The marvellous selection of paintings in this book, beautifully reproduced, cover many of his most famous canvases, for instance the moving portrait of his first wife Camille and his step-daughter Suzanne Hoschede. Also included are examples from three of his most important series; Gare Saint-Lazare painted in 1877, Rouen Cathedral, 1892, and Waterlilies, 1908. This last great sequence of 236 canvases was the crowning achievement of Monet's life. .