Interweaving reproductions of Monet's paintings with contemporaneous newspaper reviews, articles and interviews, this magnificently illustrated album (134 color and 120 black-and-white plates, plus 20 color fold-outs) shows how the public first reviled, then glorified Impressionism. Shrill ridicule and begrudging praise gave way to solid appreciation, triggered by comments such as this from Emile Zola: "His paintings speak whole volumes to me about energy and truth. . . . Here is a man among all these eunuchs." Novelist J. K. Huysmans found Monet's early canvases "sloppy" and "hasty," but the painter's friend, poet Stephane Mallarme, wrote, "I have never seen a boat poised more lightly on the water than in his pictures." Another supporter, Georges Clemenceau, praised the Water Lilies for daring to achieve the impossible. Critic Clement Greenberg defined Monet's enduring strength: "Impressionism was, and expressed, his innermost experience." Stuckey, curator at the National Gallery of Art, smoothly stitches together the commentaries to form a unique approach to understanding Monet. November 10
Copyright 1985 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The comprehensive Monet book I wanted in our library ( )

The book opens with a chronology of about 15 pages and a short introduction. The remainder of the text comprises a vast array of contemporary reports and commentaries on Monet from news media and other sources by a numerous writers. These do make fascinating reading; the wide range of writers includes among others critics, philosophers and statesmen, and among these are some notable names such as Proust, Maupassant and Zola; the comments range from ridicule to praise. They run according the publishers, chronologically from 1865, but that is a very loose description for the sequence is far from consecutive. Usefully reference to colour plates is provided in the margin alongside the relevant text. The book includes an index.

It is illustrated throughout with 132 colour plates and 119 monochromes. The colour reproduction generally is acceptable, but there are a number of images that are noticeably dark with little detail evident in the darkest areas. The monochrome images are not so good; typical of poor quality offset-litho the images are too dark with large areas of solid black entirely lacking detail. The colour plates each occupy a page, although due to the book format some paintings may occupy no more than half the page. This problem has been overcome with a few of the very wide Water Lily paintings by employing fold out pages. A very wide range of Monet’s work is covered.

Overall production does not impress, the presentation in some sections is crude, and it is badly let down by the quality of the monochrome images. It is a big and heavy book, and the large format does allow for many of Monet’s paintings to be reproduced to a reasonable size; it is worth having for the colour reproductions and the interesting text.

13.25” x 9.75” (33.6 cm x 24.7 cm) Published 1985 ISBN 0883633019 Hardback ( )