Monet (The Restless Vision)/Jackie Wullschlager

This is a comprehensive account of the life of artist Claude Monet (1840-1926).

He was born in Paris. As his father Alphonse’s business was supplying ships the family soon moved to Le Havre.

As a youngster Monet, known then as Oscar, was a talented caricaturist and – only after meeting Eugene Boudin in an art shop in Le Havre who mentored him – did he move into marine painting.

He was sufficiently talented to be sent to art school in Paris where he befriended Bazille.

The young Monet (now Claude) was impoverished.

His richer friends like Bazille, Caillebotte, Edourd Manet and dealer Paul Durand-Ruel must have dreaded a Monet letter in which bemoaned his plight and the final paragraph requested money.

One buyer Eric Hoschedé went bankrupt.

Monet married Camille and they lived in Véteuil in Normandy with Alice Hoshedé and her six children. Camille died and Monet then took up with Alice who became his second wife.

Monet is often regarded as the father of Impressionism alongside his lifelong friend Pierre Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley and Camille Pissarro.

Monet was chiefly a painter of water but he did extend to the countryside in his Haystacks series and gardens. He travelled to Venice and London.

He enjoyed robust health outliving many of his Impressionist colleagues, both wives and one son. It was only his eyesight (he had to have a cataract operation ) that constrained his painting when elderly.

His lifelong friend, apart from Renoir, was the journalist and politician Georges Clemenceau.

Monet was anti-authority and an atheist and his views on Dréyfus differed from Renoir and Edgar Dégas who were anti-Dréyfusard.

This biography is detailed and definitive but there lies its problem.

It is so detailed – covering his life month by month – that this reader got lost.

The colour plates of his main celebrated works were sufficient without the added critique of the writer.

You had to pick at detail to discover the real Monet.

Egocentric; obsessive; possibly a depressive; a family man; generous; a bon viveur who never thought of reducing his life style in hard times;  a visionary who had no earlier artistic influences.

Paul Durand-Ruel was his main dealer and supporter but the young Bertheims of Bertheim Jeune, esteemed gallerists then and now, also dealt in his work. Although Durand-Ruel travelled to the USA he failed to make the commercial equation of Joseph Duveen between old European art and new American money.

One of the paradoxes which the writer does not cover is that, although Monet had money worries, no artist equals him in commercial exploitation.

There are Monet prints, greeting cards, tea towels, bookmarks – you name it.

The other legacy worth mentioning is that you can still – as I have done – visit Giverny and stand on the Japanese bridge to see in real life the water lilies.