This volume is a biography of the founder of French impressionist painting, Claude Monet (1840-1926). It could be said that Monet reinvented the possibilities of color, and whether it was through his early interest in Japanese prints, his time in the dazzling light of Algeria as a conscript, or his personal acquaintance with the major painters of the late 1800s, what Monet produced throughout his long life would change forever the way we perceive both the natural world and its attendant phenomena. The high point of his explorations were the late series of waterlilies, painted in his own garden at Giverny, that, in their moves towards almost total formlessness, are really the origin of abstract art

• Origins and birth
• The move to le havre
• The schoolboy
• Ochard' s student-early efforts
• His mother's death
• Caricatures
• Meeting boudin
• Grant applications
• Paris
• Thomas couture
• The academie suisse From delacroix to daubigny
• The brasserie des martyrs
• The impasse
• Conscription
• Algeria
• The meeting with jongkind
• Exoneration
• Toulmouche
• Charles gleyre and his academy
• Life in the studio
• Chailly-en-biere
• The demise of the academy
• Honfleur
• The rue de furstenberg and the first salon
• The luncheon on the grass
• Camille
• Women in the garden
• The birth of jean
• A return to his roots
• A low point
• Madame gaudibert
• Dream and a wakening
• La grenouillere
• Marriage
• Trouville and the war
• London
• Zaandam
• Rue de l'isly
• Early days in argenteuil and the trip to rouen
• The port of argenteuil
• Income
• The doncieux inheritance
• Tomorrow' s men
• Impression

• Making the best of hard times
• Great encounters
• The hotel drouot
• Misfortune in the rue le peletier
• Ernest hoschede
• From parc monceau to the chateau de rottembourg
• The gare saint-lazare
• Leaving argenteuil
• L'ile de la grande jatte
• The exposition universelle
• The last hoschede sale
• Vetheuil: another new start
• Settling in
• As quick to hope as to despair
• The baritone scapegoat
• The death of camille
• Merciless people' merciless winter
• Poverty and hope
• Icebreak and renewal
• The gaulois affair
• "I am working furiously"
• Lavacourt at the salon
• La vie moderne
• Flourishing
• The return of durand-ruel
• Conflicts
• Leaving vetheuil
• Poissy and the collapse of union generale bank
• At "La Renommee des galettes"
• From the reichshoffen panorama to the pourville seascapes
• "Will you like what i am bringing black?"
• From euphoria to despair
• Provisional reckonings and a further trip
• The hotel blanquet at etretat
• "The fiasco of my Exhibition"
• Somewhere permanent to live
• Giverny

• Bordighera
• Monsieur moreno, "a veritabie marquis de carabas"
• Bordighera to menton
• New difficulties
• Octave mirbeau
• From the lathuille banquet to the international exhibition
• The life of a landscap artist
• The manneporte
• "Yesterday's monet is dead"
• Zola's l'ceuvre
• Young woman with a parasol
• Belle-lle,russell and poly
• "Once i get started,nothing stops me"
• Gustave geffroy
• The chrteau de la pinede
• The whole gang
• theovan gogh'smezzanine and the giverny studio
• Anecdote versus fact
• The first grainstacks
• Chez maurice rollinat
• It flaubert had been a painter
• For ever monet for ever rodin
• Homage to the menory of edouard manet
• Monet as a teacher
• Antonin proust under fire
• Gustave larroumet besieged
• Don't make a mattyr of yourself by desiring the impossible
• Such a beautiful landscape
• Variations on a rheme:the grainstacks
• Requiens for a man of letters
• From the grainstacks to the poplars
• The blue, pink or yellow cathedral
• The marria ges
• The hotel de ville affair

• A pond to make, a cathedral to paint
• The new word, the old world
• Legacies, sales and added value
• Camondo, signac and cezanne
• Sandviken near christiania
• As if in japan
• "Cathedral revolution"
• Monet and the environment
• Returns and repetitions
• "So all of them are manets, all monets, all pissarros"
• The henri vever sale
• Leon gerome
• Maurice guillemot, an inspird reporter
• Zola's admirable courage
• Boredom or new start
• "The paganini of the rainbow
• "So much pain and heartache"
• A "complete and unanimous" success
• Apotheosis or ddecline?
• The first series of japanese bridges
• The first london bridge picture
• The dawn of the 2oth century
• "I am a complete imbecile"
• London society
• The centennial exhibition
• The water-lily pond
• "This is not a country where you can finish a picture"
• The meadow
• Farewell to verheuil
• Towards a subjective impressionism
• "Study and research, which will prove fruitful"
• Enthusiam to order or spontaneous admiration?

• "Gardening and painting apart, I' m no good at anything"
• London: The entente cordiale
• Louis vauxcelles at giverny
• A pond Of light
• Delicate comparisons and a well-orchestrated campaign
• Social progress? An autumn in venice
• The water-lilies exhibition in 1909
• From decoration to abstraction
• The flood of 1910
• The death of alice
• "I am completely fed up with painting..."
• Onset of the cataract
• "I feel i am undertaking something very important"
• A studio constructed in the madst of war
• The grand decoration before all else
• A triumph in two panels
• The law of silence
• The donation made public
• From the hotel biron to the orangerie
• The donation is formalised
• Preparing for the cataract operation
• An operation in three stages
• The patience of dr coutela
• The "patriarch of art"
• As if he had all eterniry before him"
• From charles coutela to jacques mawas
• The donation under threat
• The swan song
• "Nothing to be done"
• "Moner...may still get back in the saddle
• "A disease which cannot be cured"
• The last remission
• A gentle death
• The funeral
• Epilogue