Review
WINNER OF THE ELIZABETH LONGFORD PRIZE FOR HISTORICAL BIOGRAPHY AND THE FRANCO BRITISH SOCIETY AWARD
"Lively... Provocative... To the wider world, Monet was a placid voluptuary, not a tormented rebel. By excavating the artist’s unexpectedly messy inner life, Wullschläger... sets out to upend this view... Artful."
―Hugh Eakin, The New York Times
"Jackie Wullschläger’s Monet: The Restless Vision… could be called an Impressionist biography of the central Impressionist… Every few chapters, a sudden nub of detail robs you of your breath… Monet may be the first artist biography I’ve encountered in which this kind of thing isn’t just readable but sexy.”
―Jackson Arn, The New Yorker
"Splendidly researched and shrewdly insightful."
―Dan Hofstadter, The Wall Street Journal
"Sumptuous... a portrait of anartist mercurial and materialist, ambitious and conceited, yet unstintingly loyal to all in his orbit... Wullschläger avoids attempting an exhaustive account; why weigh down her book with gratuitous details? She prefers to delight."
―Hamilton Cain, LA Times
"A writer of radiant energy and exhilarating insights, Wullschläger matches each phase in Monet’s long, ardent, precarious, and momentously creative and productive life with the evolution of his radically in-the-moment paintings. Her biography, like his work, profoundly alters our perceptions, revealing how, from portraits to seascapes to water lilies, Monet painted out of love and endless fascination with what it feels like to be alive."
―Booklist, starred
"Wullschläger... bring[s] to life a man whose creative genius was inseparable from his flawed humanity. Even readers well-versed in Monet’s life story will learn something new from this thorough and original reappraisal."
―Publishers Weekly
UK PRAISE:
THE TIMES, THE SUNDAY TIMES, THE TELEGRAPH, THE FINANCIAL TIMES, THE ECONOMIST, THE EVENING STANDARD and THE TABLET BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
“Wullschläger writes magnificently … Years of looking, together with masses of original research, have yielded a richly detailed book that will be invaluable for years to come.”
―Sue Prideaux, Literary Review
“Magical… Usually when reviewing a big biography I feel relieved at the end. This time I felt bereft ... This is a book to be savoured like an orange candied in honey ... It's an intoxicating read.”
― Laura Freeman, The Times
“By delving deep into his correspondence and researching his life in detail, Wullschläger emerges with a strikingly different portrait of the artist. Passionate, edgy, prickly and unstable, her Monet, the unrecognisable Monet, is a powerful new character in art.
― Waldemar Januszcyck, Sunday Times
“Jackie Wullschläger's rich and detailed biography… Beautifully illustrated... has done Monet the service of turning him back into a rounded human being.”
―Christopher Bray, Mail on Sunday
“Enthralling ... A brutally clear-headed portrait of Monet, headstrong, headlong, ferociously ambitious, complete with all his foibles.”
―Michael Glover, Tablet
About the Author
JACKIE WULLSCHLÄGER is Chief Art Critic of the Financial Times. She is the author of the prizewinning Hans Christian Andersen: The Life of a Storyteller and Chagall: Life and Exile, which won the Spear's Biography of the Year Award, and was short-listed for the Costa Biography Award, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. She lives in London.
