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Near fine condition black cloth boards with silver spine lettering contained in a good condition non price-clipped color illustrated dust jacket. Includes Preface; List of Illustrations; Epilogue; Bibliography; and Index. Illustrated with black-and-white photographic plates and a black-and-white frontispiece plate photo of Camille by Monet, 1866. The upper left jacket edge has a 1 inch chip and rubbing along the lower right front jacket edge (see photographs). All pages are in fine unmarked condition and the binding/spine is very tight and exceedingly square (see photographs). "The ru Le Peletier is unlucky," wrote Wolff (the most influential critic of the day). "Following on the fire at the Opera a new disaster has fallen on the district. An exhibition of so-called painting has just opened at Durand-Ruel's." This is typical of the critical reception accorded to the Impressionists in those early days. In 1879, still under forty, Monet was to realize the full bitterness of the sacrifice which he had made -- Camille died; faithful, devoted, uncomplaining Camille. Camille, who had followed him patiently through starvation, ridicule, and abuse, was eventually, and almost inevitably, claimed by the years of privation. Ironically the turning point was only a few years away. The second half of his life, respectable, prosperous, and full of peace and quiet, is in dramatic contrast to the stormy days which he shared with Camille. From the cocksure by in Le Havre whose slick caricatures brought him considerable local renown to the revered father-figure of French painting at Giverny Monet had travelled a long and painful road. He was cut off by his parents withou a sou. They had, anyway, a bourgeois prejudice against artists, but they could have forgiven him if his art had been academic and profitable. As it was, he was laughed to scorn by the respectable art world, he was constatly penniless, and, as if to confirm their worst suspicions there was Camille. His father's reply to a request for help was "No, not while that woman is with you." They were so poor that sometimes they had to burn the furniture to keep warm in winter, and often they went hungry to buy the precious paints and materials which were his lifeblood. On one occasion they were only kept alive by crusts of bread which Renoir filched from his mother's kitchen and brought to them. But the poverty and the hardships and the struggle are only the raw materials of this story and they serve to point more brilliantly to the warmth and vitality that grew out of them. The world of the Impressionists is a strange world full of contrasts. Men and women from all kinds of backgrounds and of widely different temperaments and characters were drawn together by one thing -- their faith in their way of painting: from the aristocratic Degas with the acid tongue to the wandering, suspicious, lonely Cezanne; from the boisterous, expansive Courbet to Boudin, shy and humble, whose exquisite miniature seascapes were Monet's first accquaintance with painting; from Monet himself, solid, iron-willed, unshakeable, to the nervy, mercurial Renoir who was up in the heights one moment and down in the depths the next. A strange world and a hard one, but, for all that, one full of generosity and gaiety and a great zest for life. And Monet was one of the great rocks which propped up this world. He had the spirit of a giant which nothing could break, and his companions found in his immense cheerfulness and courage a tremendous source of strength and inspiration. He, in his turn, drew much of that strength from Camille." -- from the inner front and rear jacket flaps.
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