With his painting Impression, Sunrise, exhibited in 1874, Claude Monet was in the vanguard of the Impressionist movement, bringing a revolutionary aesthetic to the art world, and his influence was profound. Rather than forms, Monet painted light, and continued to evolve as an artist throughout his life; his late paintings of water lilies in his garden at Giverny verged on abstraction, and inspired another generation of artists to explore new realms of expression. In this two volume catalog, with gorgeous, page-filling reproductions throughout, curator Natalia Brodskaya and art historian Nina Kalitina illuminate Impressionism through Monet's central role in it, producing a vivid portrait of a complex man and a great artist.