Monet in Giverny: Landscapes of Reflection

This beautifully illustrated book takes a fresh look at some of the masterpieces Claude Monet painted between 1883 and 1926 in and around his garden near Paris. His depiction of iconic motifs such as the Japanese footbridge, water lilies, and wisterias are characterized by subtle colouring and expressive brushwork, making these paintings among the most innovative of late 19th and early 20th-century French art.

Monet in Giverny: Landscapes of Reflection takes reflection in all of its meanings as the governing theme: as a literal motif as well as a metaphor for both Monet’s experimentation and a reflection of his own theories on art. Four illustrated essays explore the importance of Monet’s garden as a continuing source of inspiration, and examine his work in Giverny in the context of developments in painting and photography. A firsthand account of the garden, written in 1891 by French author and art critic Octave Mirbeau has been translated for this book by author Benedict Leca.

Features 12 famous paintings from Allen Memorial Art Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Columbus Museum of Art, the Dayton Art Institute, the Denver Art Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art,

Benedict Leca is curator of European Painting, Sculpture, and Drawings at the Cincinnati Art Museum. A specialist in the art and culture of 18th- and 19th-century France, he is the contributing editor of Rembrandt: Three Faces of the Master (2008), Thomas Gainsborough and the Modern Woman (2010), and most recently the author of “The World is an Apple: Cézanne’s Parisian Still-lifes and Portraits” in Cézanne et Paris (2011).

Lynne D. Ambrosini is chief curator at the Taft Museum of Art, Cincinnati. She has organized exhibitions at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts and the Taft; published articles on J.F. Millet, E. Manet, and C.F. Daubigny; and authored a catalog of Rodin bronzes belonging to the Brooklyn Museum.

Andria Derstine is curator of Collections and Curator of European and American Art at the Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College. She co-authored Masters of Italian Baroque Painting: The Detroit Institute of Arts, and Allen Memorial Art Museum: Highlights from the Collection.

Beth E. Wilson is a lecturer in the Department of Art History, The State University of New York at New Paltz, and a contributor to The Art Seminar: Photography Theory, edited by James Elkins in 2007.