*Winner of the Elizabeth Longford Prize and the Franco-British Society Literary Award*
*Shortlisted for the Duff Cooper Prize*

A magnificent biography of the founder of Impressionism

In the course of a long and exceptionally creative life, Claude Monet revolutionized painting and made some of the most iconic images in western art. Behind this great and famous artist is a volatile, voracious, nervous yet reckless man, largely unknown. Jackie Wullschläger's enthralling biography, based on thousands of never-before translated letters and unpublished sources, is the first account of Monet's turbulent private life and how it determined his expressive, sensuous, sensational painting.

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 understanding of the man, his paintings and the fullness of his achievement.

"This magical biography ... is a suitably sybaritic book. Really you should read it on a terrace with a glass of something pink ... You come away with a clearer picture not only of Monet ... but a generation of artists; you understand Renoir, Sisley, Pissarro, Degas, Cézanne and the dawn of impressionism better for the light that Wullschläger shines on it all ... 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

"Wullschläger writes magnificently about the paintings … 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

"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

"Wullschläger writes powerfully ... with [a] subtlety that characterizes every page of this immense, engrossing biography ... It would be hard to overstate the scale and ambition of the project." - Times Literary Supplement

"It is a story Wullschläger tells with aplomb ... few have engaged so thoroughly with the journals, memoirs and rich cache of [Monet's] letters. Wullschläger uses these to animate a life of plunging lows and soaring highs...failures and successes, despair and happiness ... This, though, is not simply good history or good biography ... it is her deep engagement with Monet's art that makes this book such a pleasure to read." - Spectator

"Ground-breaking." - Bookbrunch

"Magnificent." - The TLS Podcast

"In a colourful new biography, Jackie Wullschläger reveals the tempestuous man behind the canvases ... Monet has found a sympathetic, skilled biographer. Ms Wullschläger has a gift for seeing and sifting ... This biography most excels when it explains Monet's paintings." - Economist

"Eloquent and penetrating. This book has made me look again at familiar paintings, revisit well-worn assumptions about Impressionism, and given me hours of joy just savouring exceptionally well-crafted sentences and observations." - Financial Times Books of the Year