Mad Enchantment: Claude Monet and the Painting of the Water Lilies by Ross King Page A

Journal
    "Best-selling King (Leonardo and the Last Supper, 2012) consummately meshes biography with art history as he turns the creation of one resounding masterpiece into a portal onto the artist's life. . . . Never before has the full drama and significance of Monet’s magnificent Water Lilies been conveyed with such knowledge and perception, empathy and wonder." - starred review, Booklist
    "King's marvelous storytelling draws us back to these sublime, timeless paintings, so remote from -- and yet, paradoxically, so necessary a part of -- our own unquiet times." - Dallas Morning News
    "Ross King has a knack for explaining complicated processes in a manner that is not only lucid but downright intriguing . . . Fascinating." - Los Angeles Times on BRUNELLESCHI'S DOME
    "An altogether enchanting tale." - Dava Sobel, author of LONGITUDE and GALILEO'S DAUGHTER, on BRUNELLESCHI'S DOME
    "[A] dramatic, vivid, and brainy mix of biography and art history." - starred review, Booklist on LEONARDO AND THE LAST SUPPER
    "A fascinating and in-depth story of one of the world's most famous works of art that will appeal to general readers as well as academics. Highly recommended." - starred review, Library Journal on LEONARDO AND THE LAST SUPPER
    "Riveting . . . Such material could have been tedious in less nimble literary hands. But so thorough is King's grasp of the Second Empire's cultural politics, so ironic his wit and choice of detail, that his text remains a page-turner throughout." - Los Angeles Times on THE JUDGMENT OF PARIS
    "Scrupulously researched, written with wit and panache, Ross King's Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling is a sublime peek into a remarkable era." - Miami Herald on MICHELANGELO AND THE POPE'S CEILING
    About the Author

    Ross King is the author of Brunelleschi's Dome, Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling, The Judgment of Paris, Leonardo and the Last Supper, and Machiavelli: Philosopher of Power, along with two novels, Ex Libris and Domino. He has twice won Canada's Governor General's Award, and his work has been nominated for a National Book Critics' Circle Award, the Charles Taylor Prize, and the National Award for Arts Writing. He has lectured at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Smithsonian, the Aspen Institute, and the Frick Collection, and in Florence, Milan, Paris, and Giverny. Born in Canada, he now lives near Oxford with his wife, Melanie. 





In loving memory of Claire King





Claude Monet, Women in the Garden , 1866 (Musée d’Orsay, Paris)

    Édouard Manet, Claude Monet Painting in His Studio Boat , 1874 (Neue Pinakothek, Munich)

    Claude Monet, Rouen Cathedral: The Portal and the Saint-Romain Tower, Full Sunlight: Harmony in Blue and Gold , 1894 (Musée d’Orsay, Paris)

    Monet, Wheat Stacks, End of Summer , 1891 (Musée d’Orsay, Paris)

    Monet, The Gare Saint-Lazare: Arrival of a Train , 1877 (Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University)

    Paul Cézanne, Bathers , 1890–92 (Saint Louis Art Museum) One of the fourteen Cézannes owned by Monet.

    Monet’s dining room at Giverny, faithfully maintained in the original “Monet yellow”

    Monet, Waterlilies , 1908 (National Museum Wales, Cardiff)
One of the “upside-down” paintings from Monet’s landmark 1909 exhibition at the Galerie Durand-Ruel.

    Monet, Water Lilies , 1916 (National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo)
The painting for which Kojiro Matsukata paid a record 800,000 francs.

    Henri Matisse, The Music Lesson , 1917 (Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia)
A work painted soon after Matisse’s visit to Giverny.

    Monet, Self-Portrait , 1917 (Musée d’Orsay, Paris)

    Monet, The Japanese Bridge at Giverny , c. 1918–24 (Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris)

    Utagawa Hiroshige, Inside Kameido Tenjin Shrine , 1856–57

    Monet, Weeping Willow , 1918–19 (Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth)

    Monet, Nymphéas , 1907 (Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Saint-Étienne Métropole) The object of Chaumier and Le Griel’s 1925 pilgrimage to Giverny.

    Monet,