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Mad Enchantment

Claude Monet and the Painting of the Water Lilies
Apr 11, 2017CD_Librarian rated this title 4 out of 5 stars
This is a beautiful, engrossing biography of a revered painter in his later years, struggling with depression, the loss of his wife and son, and rediscovering the compulsion to paint. Monet painted huge canvases from 1914 through the war and into the 1920s until he died, bequeathing some of the most magnificent of his paintings to France, begetting the Water Lilies exhibit in L'Orangerie. Giverny is a world class treasure, the garden that inspired his later works, and is now so lovingly restored and also open to the public. Ross King also portrays the extraordinary friendship between Monet and George Clemenceau, the great French politician, who coaxed and cajoled the elderly painter to keep creating. This is a wonderful read for those who love biographies of creative people in our collective past. Winner of the 2017 RBC Charles Taylor Prize for non-fiction.