This volume on the life and work of Claude Monet is quite unlike any other book on this popular artist. For the first time a collection of Monet’s own letters have been translated and brought together with a large selection of his paintings, pastels and drawings. There are letters to fellow artists and youthful friends, long affectionate letters to family and loved ones and begging letters in times of hardship. We read of Monet’s persistence in money matters, his long negotiations with picture dealers and collectors, his frustrations and successes while on painting expeditions to Italy, Brittany and Norway, and his experience of solitude, illness and bereavement in latter life. Monet emerges from the correspondence as a more troubled and complex individual than his sun filled canvases might suggest. Alongside the artist’s letters are more than 200 superb colour reproductions, one of the largest collections of colour plates  of his paintings ever brought together in a single volume. These accompany the text and enable the reader to follow the young artist through his first encounters with the Parisian art scene, his days as a commanding presence in the Impressionist movement and the final chapter of his life when he produced some of his most ambitious and colourful work at Giverny.