The Art Book of the Year The TimesA Telegraph Sunday Times Financial Times Economist Tablet and Evening Standard Book of the YearA magnificent new biography of the founder of ImpressionismIn the course of a long and exceptionally creative life Claude Monet revolutionized painting and made some of the most iconic images in western art. Misunderstood and mocked at the beginning of his career he risked everything to pursue his original vision. Although close to starvation when he invented impressionism on the banks of the Seine in the 1860s70s in the following decades he emerged as the powerful leader of the new painting in Paris at one of its most exciting cultural moments. His symphonic series Haystacks Poplars and Rouen Cathedral brought wealth and renown. Then he withdrew to paint only the pond in his garden. The late Water Lilies ignored during his lifetime are now celebrated as pioneers of twentieth century modernism.Behind this great and famous artist is a volatile voracious nervous yet reckless man largely unknown. Jackie Wullschlgers enthralling biography based on thousands of neverbefore translated letters and unpublished sources is the first account of Monets turbulent private life and how it determined his expressive sensuous sensational painting. He was as obsessional in his love affairs as in his love of nature and changed his art decisively three times when the woman at the centre of his life changed. Enduring devastating bereavements he pushed the frontier of painting inward to evoke memory and the passing of time. His work also responded intensely to outside cataclysms the Dreyfus Affair the First World War. Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau was his closest friend. Rich intellectual currents connected him to writers from Zola to Proust affection and rivalry to Renoir Pissarro and Manet.Monet said he was driven wild with the need to put down what I experience. This rich and moving biography immerses us in that passionate experience transforming our und