Description
From the Dust Jacket
For more than two decades no major new book has added to the appreciation of Claude Monet, who set out to become the greatest landscape painter of the nineteenth century and became one of the great masters of the twentieth. This book is an hommage to Monet, providing a more complete perspective on his work than any previous study. In more than 125 color and nearly 240 duotone reproductions Monet’s art is freshly examined; the familiar and treasured pictures are here, but there are scores of new images—including some 50 never before seen in color—gathered from private collections, dealer archives, and museums throughout Europe and the United States. They have been assembled by Robert Gordon, who has spent some ten years in the quest. The purpose of this extraordinary collection is to fully explore the painting problems that Monet confronted throughout his life, problems which changed with each new motif, subject, or theme that he chose. They are the eternal problems of the painter—light, color, composition, structure—but the solutions were Monet’s own. In nine cogent chapters, Andrew Forge—of the School of Art at Yale University and a painter himself—traces Monet’s life and work from his early years at Le Havre and Paris to his final days at home among his beloved gardens at Giverny. Forge writes of Monet’s family, his friendships, his relations with the professional art world, evoking the warmth, humor, and shrewdness of the man. More importantly, Forge recaptures Monet in process, standing alone before the motif, seeking answers not in a theory, movement, or school, but within himself. He travels to the sites of Monet’s exploratory campaigns—on the Normandy coast, at Bordighera, Belle-lle, Antibes—to see what Monet saw and to share with the reader the struggles that Monet faced, his anguish, and his joy. He reassembles the great series of paintings—of haystacks, poplars, Rouen Cathedral facades—in order to evoke Monet’s responses to the challenges of working directly from nature. Forge’s ground-breaking final chapters and the fascinating picture sections that illuminate them are based on Robert Gordon’s discovery of numerous unpublished documents, architectural plans, and personal letters. They tell, for the first time, the complete story of Monet’s monumental gift of paintings to the state. Here, it can be said, his life came full circle: his boyhood meditations by the sea are transcribed onto canvas sixty years later in the peaceful cycle of water lily decorations. But the dream was not easily realized. Paintings that Monet intended for one site had to be completely rethought and laboriously reworked when a different space was chosen. In his eighties, his vision impaired by cataracts, Monet summoned all his mastery to complete his crowning achievement, the Nympheas series in the Orangerie museum in Paris. Reproduced in the book in two glorious full-color foldouts, they are his gift to France, his legacy to the world.
Publishing Info
Monet by Robert Gordon and Andrew Forge. From Abradale Press / Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers with 1983 copyrights. The ISBN is 0-8109-8091-6. This hardcover book measures about 13″ x 10-1/2″ and has 304 numbered pages and is stuffed with great b/w and color photos.
Condition
Enlarge the photo above. In very good condition for age with lighter handling/storage on the dust jacket and boards and pages in very good condition. No names or markings noted. Stored in and ships from clean, smoke-free home.
Shipping
Generally sent the same day payment arrives. Unless you request otherwise, I will wrap the book in plastic wrap to help protect it from the elements, create a custom-made cardboard box to ship it in, and send via Media Mail with Delivery Confirmation tracking. See the shipping page for the cost to send a seven-pound Media Mail package. Insurance is an additional cost as described. I am delighted to combine postage and insurance costs if you purchase more than one item. The second item may travel for free or just a few cents more — so it’s worth taking a look at my other items before you complete your order.
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