Book Reviews: A Day with Claude Monet in Giverny

Claude Monet first spotted the tranquil village of Giverny from a train window. Spellbound, he packed up his belongings and moved to the Normand nook in 1883. The impressionist master soon made the garden at Giverny his greatest artistic accomplishment and a catalyst for his work. In 1890, he began extensive renovations, installing a picturesque water lily pond inspired by the Japanese prints he avidly collected. The setting of Monet’s Water Lilies series is now the most visited garden of its size in the Western world.

The vivid illustrations of his celebrated landscapes, pictures of his home and idyllic grounds plunge readers right into the heart of the floral paradise to which the artist dedicated the last 40 years of his life. This is a heady and intimate tour inside Monet’s beautiful, idyllic sanctuary.

Highly recommended.

A Day with Claude Monet in Giverny. Adrien Goetz and Hugues Gall. Photography by  Francis Hammond. List price £22.50. Published by Flammarion. Purchase on Amazon below.

Reviewed in France Today magazine