Sometimes he dreamt he held her; that he would turn in bed and she would be there. But she was gone and he was old. Nearly seventy. Only cool paint met his fingers. “Ma très chère . . .” Darkness started to fall, dimming the paintings. He felt the crumpled letter in his pocket. “I loved you so,” he said. “I never would have had it turn out as it did. You were with all of us when we began, you gave us courage. These gardens at Giverny are for you but I’m old and you’re forever young and will never see them. . . .”
 
In the mid-nineteenth century, a young man named Claude Monet decided that he would rather endure a difficult life painting landscapes than take over his father’s nautical supplies business in a French seaside town. Against his father’s will, and with nothing but a dream and an insatiable urge to create a new style of art that repudiated the Classical Realism of the time, he set off for Paris.
 
But once there he is confronted with obstacles: an art world that refused to validate his style, extreme poverty, and a war that led him away from his home and friends. But there were bright spots as well: his deep, enduring friendships with men named Renoir, Cézanne, Pissarro, Manet – a group that together would come to be known as the Impressionists, and that supported each other through the difficult years. But even more illuminating was his lifelong love, Camille Doncieux, a beautiful, upper-class Parisian girl who threw away her privileged life to be by the side of the defiant painter and embrace the lively Bohemian life of their time.
 
His muse, his best friend, his passionate lover, and the mother to his two children, Camille stayed with Monet—and believed in his work—even as they lived in wretched rooms, were sometimes kicked out of those, and often suffered the indignities of destitution. She comforted him during his frequent emotional torments, even when he would leave her for long periods to go off on his own to paint in the countryside.
 
But Camille had her own demons – secrets that  Monet could never penetrate, including one that when eventually revealed would pain him so deeply that he would never fully recover from its impact. For though Camille never once stopped loving the painter with her entire being, she was not immune to the loneliness that often came with being his partner.
 
A vividly-rendered portrait of both the rise of Impressionism and of the artist at the center of the movement, Claude and Camille is above all a love story of the highest romantic order.


From the Hardcover edition.

Author: Stephanie Cowell
Paperback: 352 pages
Company: Broadway (2011-04-05) (2011-04-05)
ISBN: 0307463222
List Price: $15.00
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Author: Daniel Wildenstein
Hardcover: 480 pages
Company: Taschen (2010-10-01)
ISBN: 3836523213
List Price: $29.99
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"Steven" traces Monet's life from his childhood, through his rejection of traditional painting and the development of Impressionism, to his final, settled years in Giverny, sprinkling the report with his own drawings and comments.

Author: True Kelley
Mass Market Paperback: 32 pages
Company: Grosset & Dunlap (2001-10-01) (2001-10-01)
ISBN: 044842522X
List Price: $5.99
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Claude Monet (1840-1926) was both the most typical and the most individual painter associated with the Impressionist movement. His long life and extraordinary work were dedicated to a pictorial exploration of the sensations which reality, and in particular landscape, offer the human eye. Monet's poplars, grain stacks, Rouen Cathedral, and water lilies paintings - among the most beloved works of the Impressionist period - were created long before the currents of the contemporary avant-grade and had an inestimable influence on the development of modern art. This book traces the life's work of one of art history's most beloved painters.

Author: Karin Sagner
Hardcover: 220 pages Bargain Price
Company: Taschen (2006-06-01)
List Price: $14.99
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Julie lives in Paris, but she longs to walk in a beautiful country garden. When her mother takes her on a visit to rural Giverny, Julie discovers a beautiful garden and befriends the man she believes is the gardener. In fact, he is the gardenÂ's owner, the immortal artist Claude Monet. This is a title in BarronÂ's AnholtÂ's Artists Books for Children series, in which author and illustrator Laurence Anholt recalls memorable and sometimes amusing moments when the lives of the artists were touched by children. AnholtÂ's fine illustrations appear on every page and include reproductions of works by the artists.

Author: Laurence Anholt
Paperback: 32 pages
Company: Barron's Educational Series (2007-10-01)
ISBN: 0764138553
List Price: $8.99
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Monet, the father of French impressionist painting, devoted twenty-five years to a series of paintings of the water lilies that floated in the pond of his lavish garden in Giverny. This volume is dedicated to those paintings, and opens with a biography of Monet that links the artist’s childhood passion for nature and for drawing to his later fascination with light. Monet’s experiments with how to best capture light and its effect on the sky and on water at different times of the day include paintings such as Impression, Sunrise (1872), which inspired the name of the impressionist movement. A critical text analyzes Monet’s ingenuity, audacity, and modernity, as well as his influence on other artists, from Zao Wou-ki to music to Shirley Goldfarb. This definitive catalog is completed by 210 color reproductions of the water lily paintings with annotated captions, period shots of Giverny by photographers such as Cartier-Bresson, and rare documents including Monet’s personal letters to his optometrist regarding his failing eyesight, which has been linked to his development of the impressionist style. The large-format volume features an eight-page gatefold of the murals at the Orangerie in Paris, and it serves as both an accessible introductory work and a complete reference guide to an important component in the history of art.

Author: Jean-Dominique REY, Denis Rouart
Hardcover: 178 pages
Company: Flammarion (2008-09-09) (2008-09-09)
ISBN: 2080300768
List Price: $49.95
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Author: Ann Waldron
Paperback: 112 pages ISBN13: 9780448449852, Condition: New, Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!
Company: Grosset & Dunlap (2009-07-23) (2009-07-23)
ISBN: 0448449854
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Throughout his life, Claude Monet wrote and spoke about his art. This elegant book pairs spectacular reproductions of some of his most important paintings with his own words to create a uniquely personal look at the work of one of the worlds most renowned artists. The poetic text introduces readers to the Impressionists' goal of capturing a fleeting moment and makes this an art book perfect for the young and the young at heart.

Hardcover: 48 pages Bargain Price
Company: Chronicle Books (2009-08-19)
List Price: $15.99
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In celebration of the twentieth anniversary of the first publication of Monet's Passion: Ideas, Inspiration, and Insights from the Painter's Gardens, this completely revised edition of Elizabeth Murray's best-selling book offers new text, new images, and new garden plans based on Claude Monet's spectacular gardens at Giverny.

A professional gardener and artist, Murray helped to restore the Giverny gardens in the 1980s and has since enjoyed privileged access to the site, where she returns annually to capture Monet's passion at its most radiant and riotous. In this redesigned, updated edition, Murray discusses the development and history of Monet's Giverny estate and brings new insight to Monet s approach to gardening and design. Emphasizing his keen understanding of color balance and his genius for maximizing the effects of light, Murray explores the favorite color combinations and techniques with which Monet experimented in both painting and gardening—each pursuit informing the other. Murray's lush photographs chronicle the present-day gardens, and a section titled 'Bringing Giverny Home' provides detailed Giverny-based garden plans that can be applied anywhere. Full-color illustrations of the gardens, a list of the plants originally used by Monet, and a plant cultivation section round out this immensely helpful guide to creating year-round beauty in one's own backyard.

140 pages with over 75 color photographs, along with color garden plans, transparent overlays for garden designs, and historical photographs. Size: 8.75 x 8.75 inches. Smyth-sewn casebound book with ribbon marker and jacket.

Author: Elizabeth Murray
Hardcover: 140 pages ISBN13: 9780764953897, Condition: New, Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!
Company: Pomegranate (2010-03-31)
ISBN: 0764953893
List Price: $35.00
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Monet was a French impressionist painter who brought the study of the transient effects of natural light to its most refined expression. Born on November 14, 1840 in Paris, he spent most of his childhood in Le Havre. In his teens, he studied drawing and painted seascapes outside with the French painter Eugene Louis Boudin. During the 1860s he was associated with the pre-impressionist painter Edouard Manet, and with other aspiring French painters destined to form the impressionist school - Camille Pissarro, Pierre Auguste Renoir, and Alfred Sisley.

Monet art book contains over 550 Impressionist reproductions covering most of his greatest works with title and date.


Author: Daniel Ankele, Denise Ankele
Kindle Edition: 504 pages Kindle eBook
Company: Ankele Publishing, LLC (2011-06-23) (2011-06-23)
List Price: $9.95
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