Monet Abroad: Paintings and Letters 1863-1917

Travel alongside Claude Monet to twenty destinations where he created his most famous work – including Venice, Rouen, Étretat, Antibes and London – all of which nourished his mastery of light.

Claude Monet was a lifelong traveller. For more than fifty years, he made his way through Europe, looking for remarkable scenes, reflections, nuances and transparencies of light to capture through his painting – the result of patient, obsessive observation. From Normandy to Venice, via London, Brittany, the Mediterranean and the banks of the Seine, his travels were far more than mere journeys: they were an incessant quest for visual sensations. Florence Gentner retraces his artistic and personal trajectory, showing how twenty destinations profoundly influenced some 250 of his major works, as well as the evolution of his palette.

Extracts from more than 100 letters, numerous sketches, notebook excerpts and reproductions reveal the circumstances of his journeys and convey the painter’s state of mind while he was away from home. His travel paintings constitute an exceptional body of work, enriched, for each trip, by an insightful analysis from Marine Kiesel.

Part artistic biography, part travelogue, and presented in a beautiful printed cloth hardcover binding, Monet Abroad reveals the modernity and insatiable curiosity of a painter constantly in search of new horizons and new subjects.

About the Author

Florence Gentner was formerly special assistant to the Carnavalet Museum and the Maison de Victor Hugo. She is the author of numerous books on Claude Monet and Victor Hugo. Marine Kiesel is an art and fashion historian. She is the chief curator of the 19th-century fashion department at the Palais Galliera in Paris.