Monet: The Restless Vision
Monet: The Restless Vision
Monet: The Restless Vision
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Description
Description
The Art Book of the Year, The Times
A Telegraph, Sunday Times, Financial Times, Economist, Tablet and Evening Standard Book of the Year
A magnificent new biography of the founder of Impressionism In the course of a long and exceptionally creative life, Claude Monet revolutionized painting and made some of the most iconic images in western art. Misunderstood and mocked at the beginning of his career, he risked everything to pursue his original vision. Although close to starvation when he invented impressionism on the banks of the Seine in the 1860s-70s, in the following decades he emerged as the powerful leader of the new painting in Paris at one of its most exciting cultural moments. His symphonic series Haystacks, Poplars, and Rouen Cathedral brought wealth and renown. Then he withdrew to paint only the pond in his garden. The late Water Lilies, ignored during his lifetime, are now celebrated as pioneers of twentieth century modernism. Behind this great and famous artist is a volatile, voracious, nervous yet reckless man, largely unknown. Jackie Wullschläger's enthralling biography, based on thousands of never-before translated letters and unpublished sources, is the first account of Monet's turbulent private life and how it determined his expressive, sensuous, sensational painting. He was as obsessional in his love affairs as in his love of nature, and changed his art decisively three times when the woman at the centre of his life changed. Enduring devastating bereavements, he pushed the frontier of painting inward, to evoke memory and the passing of time. His work also responded intensely to outside cataclysms - the Dreyfus Affair, the First World War. Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau was his closest friend. Rich intellectual currents connected him to writers from Zola to Proust; affection and rivalry to Renoir, Pissarro and Manet. Monet said he was driven 'wild with the need to put down what I experience'. This rich and moving biography immerses us in that passionate experience, transforming our understanding of the man, his paintings and the fullness of his achievement.
About the Author
About the Author
JACKIE WULLSCHLÄGER is Chief Art Critic of the Financial Times. She is the author of the prizewinning Hans Christian Andersen: The Life of a Storyteller and Chagall: Life and Exile, which won the Spear's Biography of the Year Award, and was short-listed for the Costa Biography Award, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. She lives in London.
Critical Reviews
Critical Reviews
WINNER OF THE ELIZABETH LONGFORD PRIZE FOR HISTORICAL BIOGRAPHY AND THE FRANCO BRITISH SOCIETY AWARD
"Lively... Provocative... To the wider world, Monet was a placid voluptuary, not a tormented rebel. By excavating the artist's unexpectedly messy inner life, Wullschläger... sets out to upend this view... Artful."
―Hugh Eakin, The New York Times "Jackie Wullschläger's Monet: The Restless Vision... could be called an Impressionist biography of the central Impressionist... Every few chapters, a sudden nub of detail robs you of your breath... Monet may be the first artist biography I've encountered in which this kind of thing isn't just readable but sexy."
―Jackson Arn, The New Yorker "Splendidly researched and shrewdly insightful."
―Dan Hofstadter, The Wall Street Journal "Sumptuous... a portrait of anartist mercurial and materialist, ambitious and conceited, yet unstintingly loyal to all in his orbit... Wullschläger avoids attempting an exhaustive account; why weigh down her book with gratuitous details? She prefers to delight."
―Hamilton Cain, LA Times "A writer of radiant energy and exhilarating insights, Wullschläger matches each phase in Monet's long, ardent, precarious, and momentously creative and productive life with the evolution of his radically in-the-moment paintings. Her biography, like his work, profoundly alters our perceptions, revealing how, from portraits to seascapes to water lilies, Monet painted out of love and endless fascination with what it feels like to be alive."
―Booklist, starred "Wullschläger... bring[s] to life a man whose creative genius was inseparable from his flawed humanity. Even readers well-versed in Monet's life story will learn something new from this thorough and original reappraisal."
―Publishers Weekly UK PRAISE: THE TIMES, THE SUNDAY TIMES, THE TELEGRAPH, THE FINANCIAL TIMES, THE ECONOMIST, THE EVENING STANDARD and THE TABLET BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
"Wullschläger writes magnificently ... Years of looking, together with masses of original research, have yielded a richly detailed book that will be invaluable for years to come."
―Sue Prideaux, Literary Review "Magical... Usually when reviewing a big biography I feel relieved at the end. This time I felt bereft ... This is a book to be savoured like an orange candied in honey ... It's an intoxicating read."
― Laura Freeman, The Times "By delving deep into his correspondence and researching his life in detail, Wullschläger emerges with a strikingly different portrait of the artist. Passionate, edgy, prickly and unstable, her Monet, the unrecognisable Monet, is a powerful new character in art.
― Waldemar Januszcyck, Sunday Times
"Jackie Wullschläger's rich and detailed biography... Beautifully illustrated... has done Monet the service of turning him back into a rounded human being."
―Christopher Bray, Mail on Sunday
"Enthralling ... A brutally clear-headed portrait of Monet, headstrong, headlong, ferociously ambitious, complete with all his foibles."
―Michael Glover, Tablet
"Lively... Provocative... To the wider world, Monet was a placid voluptuary, not a tormented rebel. By excavating the artist's unexpectedly messy inner life, Wullschläger... sets out to upend this view... Artful."
―Hugh Eakin, The New York Times "Jackie Wullschläger's Monet: The Restless Vision... could be called an Impressionist biography of the central Impressionist... Every few chapters, a sudden nub of detail robs you of your breath... Monet may be the first artist biography I've encountered in which this kind of thing isn't just readable but sexy."
―Jackson Arn, The New Yorker "Splendidly researched and shrewdly insightful."
―Dan Hofstadter, The Wall Street Journal "Sumptuous... a portrait of anartist mercurial and materialist, ambitious and conceited, yet unstintingly loyal to all in his orbit... Wullschläger avoids attempting an exhaustive account; why weigh down her book with gratuitous details? She prefers to delight."
―Hamilton Cain, LA Times "A writer of radiant energy and exhilarating insights, Wullschläger matches each phase in Monet's long, ardent, precarious, and momentously creative and productive life with the evolution of his radically in-the-moment paintings. Her biography, like his work, profoundly alters our perceptions, revealing how, from portraits to seascapes to water lilies, Monet painted out of love and endless fascination with what it feels like to be alive."
―Booklist, starred "Wullschläger... bring[s] to life a man whose creative genius was inseparable from his flawed humanity. Even readers well-versed in Monet's life story will learn something new from this thorough and original reappraisal."
―Publishers Weekly UK PRAISE: THE TIMES, THE SUNDAY TIMES, THE TELEGRAPH, THE FINANCIAL TIMES, THE ECONOMIST, THE EVENING STANDARD and THE TABLET BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
"Wullschläger writes magnificently ... Years of looking, together with masses of original research, have yielded a richly detailed book that will be invaluable for years to come."
―Sue Prideaux, Literary Review "Magical... Usually when reviewing a big biography I feel relieved at the end. This time I felt bereft ... This is a book to be savoured like an orange candied in honey ... It's an intoxicating read."
― Laura Freeman, The Times "By delving deep into his correspondence and researching his life in detail, Wullschläger emerges with a strikingly different portrait of the artist. Passionate, edgy, prickly and unstable, her Monet, the unrecognisable Monet, is a powerful new character in art.
― Waldemar Januszcyck, Sunday Times
"Jackie Wullschläger's rich and detailed biography... Beautifully illustrated... has done Monet the service of turning him back into a rounded human being."
―Christopher Bray, Mail on Sunday
"Enthralling ... A brutally clear-headed portrait of Monet, headstrong, headlong, ferociously ambitious, complete with all his foibles."
―Michael Glover, Tablet
Publishing Information
Publishing Information
Publisher:
Knopf Publishing Group
Pub date:
2024-09-24
Length:
576 pages
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