This book brings together 40 prints of the artist's paintings in beautiful colour, as well as a lengthy text which precedes them, with photographs of Modigliani, and examples of his sculptures and caryatids. Werner presents M as a tragic figure since his health was poor - he suffered from tuberculosis all his life, and he died relatively young at 35, without receiving any substantial recognition of his work. Much is made of his excessive social life in Paris, though M was Italian, where he is said to have indulged in alcohol and hashish. He focused on painting after he was unable to continue with sculpture because of his lack of money, the difficulty in obtaining materials, and the affect of the stone dust on his weak lungs. Werner also tells us that M suffered from a psychoneurosis, and calls him a "solipsist who produced exclusively self-portraits, symbolic representations of his own tortured soul". However these arguments do not appear to relate to the nature of his painting. His work is calm, not tortured, and the idea that his infamous style of Expressionist distortion is meant to reveal a "paranoiac autism" seems silly. The photos we see of M show that he does not resemble his skittle-shaped, swan-necked, almond-eyed portraits. Even the notion that some of the subjects having closed eyes meaning an inner directed concentration based on a fear of the world, does not appreciate the stylistic choice he made to express his form of conception upon reality. He had trained as a draftsman and considered his work "illuminations", accentuating attributes to the point of caricature. The faces of his sculptures bear the same kind of visage. His work is both striking in his use of colour, where he favoured strong lines and prefered primary blacks and reds; and tender in the delicate way he treats the subjects, whether they be Parisian socialities, other artists, his two mistresses - Beatrice Hastings and Jeanne Hebuterne, or working class models like maids and peasants. What ultimately makes the work of Modigliani great is how one can return to the prints again and again, to revel in their mannered elegance, their sadness and beauty, and his unique balance between naturalism and abstraction.

This book is unbelievable in its thoroughness. I read the book over 10 years ago, and I have never read another art book to match it.

This books shows what happens when an inquisitive mind investigates art. It answers not only any question that you had about Monet's art, but even those that you never thought of asking.

For example it addresses the signficance of the expansion of the French Railway system, and the growth of the middle class, in defining the market for art.

It addresses the canvas sizes used by Monet, and his progression from a history painter to a painter of genre paintings ( the one thing that he had in common with Degas ).

I think that the important thing about this book is that it shows that a thorough intellectual non-purely visual approach can be made to the analysis of art, without the use of artspeak. The result is a book that is both readable and informs. Oh what a novelty!

I bought this lovely book from a bookstore in Subic Bay during my vacation. I enjoy it a lot. The reason I love it is because most of the time, you buy something related to an artist, you hear the writer say about the artist. But this one, you hear what the artist thinks. Plus the works from Monet beside every sentence, this book is really a wisdom of a true artist! As a matter of fact, I'm trying to buy the same series, but it seems not so easy to find.

By the way, there are notes for those words which tell you when Monet said or wrote them. It helps.

The artist's rainbow palette and his self-imposed task of "painting light" are vividly presented in Monet and the Mediterranean by Joachim Pisarro. Focusing on Monet's work during his three stays on the southern coasts of France and Italy, this exhibition catalogue showcases paintings executed under the most extreme effects of light.

Grandson of Camille Pisarro and a noted art historian, Joachim Pisarro writes, "Monet's decision to paint by the Mediterranean in 1884 was bound to an inner strategy: his art was a constant search for shatteringly new pictorial motifs."

We are not disappointed, the lushly overgrown vegetation and brilliant sun in his landscapes provides spellbinding visual excitement.

"What is astonishing about Monet's work in the south is the degree of elasticity, of pictorial metamorphosis, and of technical virtuosity it required from the artist." Mr. Pisarro said. "A century after these paintings were produced, their impact remains undiminished."

An insightful biography and history, Monet and the Mediterranean holds 120 striking color plates.

During his last 40 years, Claude MONET AT GIVERNY pioneered modern art with his three painting series. Like the serial painting methods of Japanese woodcut artists Hiroshige's "Hundred views of Edo" and Hokusai's "Hundred views of Mt Fuji," the Giverny village area series painted the same or closely related subjects from different viewpoints and in different formats. The "Early morning on the Seine" series colored varying weather and followed changing light under influences from Eugene Boudin; Barbizon school artists Camille Corot and Charles-Francois Daubigny; and Johan Barthold Jongkind. As in the later waterlily paintings, water, light and reflection mixed natural and reflected realities so well as not to be able to tell the difference. The "Poplars" series brought to mind influences from Japanese woodcuts and Van Gogh while setting the stage for art nouveau's coordinated color series and decoratively two-dimensional line. Very 20th-century were the abstractly treated "Grain stacks" series and the open-ended, open-formed waterlily paintings alternating sky and water across huge formats without frames. Karin Sagner-Duchting gives beautiful examples for what she says in her clear text, so the book is a must for going on to Joachim Pissarro's MONET AND THE MEDITERRANEAN, William C. Seitz's CLAUDE MONET, and Paul Hayes Tucker's MONET AT ARGENTEUIL, MONET IN THE '90S and MONET IN THE 20TH CENTURY.

I love this notebook. I love the beautiful cover and the paintings give a great background for expressing my thoughts. I used it as a journal, but it could be also used for poetry, schoolwork, or whatever you want. A great buy.

This book show us a real Genius working. We can see in this book all life that his paints show, in a very critic aspect, with great history beside each one. It is wonderful. I'm brasilian and I fell in love for this book.

As a long time fan of impressionist art, Claude Monet and gardening, I found this book very informative. The setting is Monet's former home just outside Paris, France. The book details how the grounds were renovated under Monet's direction and how upkeep continues on the grounds today. Many of the settings such as the Lilly Pond are pictured and described in detail. This book is well worth the purchase price for Monet fans.

I love this book! Monet is one of my favorite artist's and I especially love his Water Lily pictures. The contrasting colors are so beautiful! His art work always gives me a feeling of peace and serenity. Monet is an artist that you don't have to understand the painting but just be able to enjoy all the colors and life that are in them.

For any student of rhetoric/oratory and its most paramount importance within late Renaissance music, this resource will be indispensable. It is a window into the humanist philosophy rampant in the latter part sixteenth century, and an enlightening view of the German rationalism that pervaded all of Europe at that time.