Claude Monet by the Lily Pond
In the final entry of "Claude Monet: The Art of the Series," we visit Monet at his water-lily pond in Giverny.
This is the fifth and final essay in Claude Monet: The Art of the Series.
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As the First World War embroiled France, Georges Clemenceau made a trip to Normandy to visit his artist-friend at Giverny. The former prime minister (who would be elected to lead France once again in 1917) was concerned about Claude Monet, and he felt he had just the project to revive the painter’s spirits.
The rest of Europe was engulfed in disaster and death; the modern world had come marching into view with the sound of machine guns and the suffocation of mustard gas. The Belle Époque, the world of Impressionism, had disappeared. At Giverny, Monet was dealing with his own tragedies—his wife Alice had died in 1911, and his eldest son Jean had died in 1914. Already prone to depressive episodes, Monet sunk into a dee…
