Monet: The Restless Vision

Financial Times art critic Wullschläger (Chagall) delivers a scrupulous biography of impressionist painter Claude Monet (1840-1926). Beginning with his childhood in Paris and Le Havre, she touches on his family (“Resourcefulness, adaptability, robust health, and a resolutely urban outlook were the legacy of [his] grandparents”), his teenage stint as a caricaturist, his military service, and the genesis of his artistic career. But the focus lies in how the women he loved shaped his creative life. According to Wullschläger, Monet “made his reputation” painting his future wife Camille Doncieux in such works as The Woman in a Green Dress, in which he simultaneously showed off and “disguised” his subject by depicting her as she walked away. Also explored are the period of “intense introspection” during Camille’s illness leading up her 1879 death that fueled Monet’s obsessive work on pastorals, and the new productivity he harnessed during his courtship with and eventual marriage to Alice Hoschedé, who inspired Monet with her “strength” and “her faith in him and ambition for him.” Refreshingly, Wullschläger doesn’t shy away from Monet’s less savory characteristics, including his rage, emotional manipulation, and profligate spending, bringing 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. (Sept.)

Correction: An earlier version of this review misstated the years of Monet’s birth and death.