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The Restless Vision
by Jackie Wullschläger
A groundbreaking look at the life and art of one of the most influential, modern painters of the late nineteenth century and founder of the Impressionist movement.
Drawing on thousands of never-before-translated letters and unpublished sources, this biography reveals dramatic new information about the life and work of one of the late nineteenth century's most important painters. Despite being mocked at the beginning of his career, and living hand to mouth, Monet risked all to pursue his vision, and his early work along the banks of the Seine in the 1860s and '70s would come to be revered as Impressionism. In the following decades, he emerged as its celebrated leader in one of the most exciting cultural moments in Paris, before withdrawing to his house and garden to paint the late Water Lilies, which were ignored during his lifetime and would later have a major influence on all twentieth-century painters both figurative and abstract.
This is the first time we see the turbulent life of this volatile and voracious man, who was as obsessed by his love affairs as he was by nature. He changed his art decisively three times when the woman at the center of his life changed; Wullschläger brings these unknown, passionate, and passionately committed women to the foreground. Monet's closest friend was Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau; strong intellectual currents connected him to writers from Zola to Proust, as well as to his friends Manet, Renoir, and Pissarro. Brilliant and absorbing, this biography will forever change our understanding of Monet's life and work.
"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 review)
"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
"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." ―Literary Review (UK)
"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." ―The Times (UK)
"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. ―Sunday Times (UK)
"Jackie Wullschläger's rich and detailed biography… Beautifully illustrated... has done Monet the service of turning him back into a rounded human being." ―Mail on Sunday (UK)
This information about Monet was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Jackie Wullschlager 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.
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