Claude Monet dedicated his life to capturing the fleeting effects of natural light and the sensations of the atmosphere.
The Grandes Decorations were conceived to be a testament to what he had learned in a lifetime of observations, including the 1920-26 painting The Morning.
But it also expressed his deepest convictions -- that even a lifetime could not reveal the meaning of nature's mysteries and that the eternal beauty of the natural world endured beyond the limits of human comprehension.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Debra N. Mancoff is an art historian and lecturer and the author of numerous books on nineteenth-century European and American painting, including Publication International, Ltd.'s, Impressionism and Van Gogh. Other titles include Sunflowers, Monet's Garden in Art, Van Gogh: Fields and Flowers, and Mary Cassatt: Reflections of Women's Lives. Ms. Mancoff is a scholar in residence at the Newberry Library.
