Monet's Giverny: an impressionist colony

Abstract

Illustrated with sun-drenched Impressionist paintings and with contemporary photographs of Monet's gardens, this book chronicles the much-loved artists' colony at Giverny. The picturesque little village of Giverny, located on the Seine less than an hour's train ride from Paris, attracted 19th-century artists of all nationalities. Monet wasn't the first to discover it, but he was certainly the most famous, and his presence there attracted not only his French colleagues but also Impressionists from all over the world, particularly the United States, Canada, and Great Britain. The book aims to recapture the lives they led and the art they made, from the early contributions of Paul Cezanne, Theodore Robinson, Blair Bruce, Theodore Butler, Lilla Cabot Perry, and John Singer Sargent to the later ones of Frederick Frieseke, Frederick and Mary MacMonnies, Richard Miller and many others. The paintings and the extensive quotes from the artists' own letters and journals evoke the pleasure of living and working in a place that seems (true or not) to have been an artists' paradise. The book includes quotations from the artists' journals and letters, an annotated map of significant locations, and biographies of approximately 100 artists.