We have all seen, whether live, in photographs or on postcards, some of
Claude Monet's legendary water lily paintings. They are in museums all
over the world and are among the most beloved works of art of the past
century. Yet, ironically, these soothing images were created amid
terrible personal turmoil and sadness.
The extraordinarily dramatic history behind the creation of these
paintings is little-known; Ross King's new audiobook tells that story
for the first time and, in the process, presents a compelling and
original portrait of one of our most beloved artists.
King tells the full history of the special circumstances in which Monet
created the Water Lilies. As World War I exploded within hearing
distance of his house at Giverny, he was facing his own personal
crucible. In 1911, aged 71, his adored wife, Alice, died, plunging him
into deep mourning. A year later he began going blind. Then his eldest
son, Jean, fell ill and died of syphilis, and his other son was sent to
the front to fight for France.
Within months a violent storm destroyed much of the garden that had been
his inspiration for some 20 years. At the same time, his reputation was
under attack, as a new generation of artists, led by Pablo Picasso and
Henri Matisse, were dazzling the art world and expressing disgust with
Impressionism.
Against all this, fighting his own self-doubt, depression, and age,
Monet found the wherewithal to construct a massive new studio, 70 feet
long and 50 feet high, to accommodate the gigantic canvases that would,
he hoped, revive him.
Using letters, memoirs, and other sources not employed by other
biographers, and focusing on this remarkable period in the artist's
life, Ross King reveals a more complex, more human, more intimate Claude
Monet than has ever been portrayed and firmly places his water lily
project among the greatest achievements in the history of art.
