在这项新的介绍性研究中，19世纪法国艺术领域的最顶尖的专家之一James H. Rubin描述了莫奈创作的发展，从莫奈作为漫画家的早期作品到后期的以睡莲和他在吉维尼的花园为主题的画作。鲁宾探索了影响莫奈作品的文化潮流：引发他政治观点的乌托邦思想；他对日本版画，园艺和装饰艺术趋势的兴趣；他与早期的法国风景画画家以及马奈（Manet）和雷诺阿（Renoir）等同时代画家的关系。

Claude Monet (1840 1926) is one of the most admired and famous painters of all time, and the architect of Impressionism: a revolution that gave birth to modern art. His technique painting out of doors, at the seashore or in the city streets was as radically new as his subject matter, the landscapes and middle-class pastimes of a newly industrialized Paris. Painting with an unprecedented immediacy and authenticity, Monet claimed that his work was something new: both natural and true.

In this new introductory study, James H. Rubin one of the world s foremost specialists in 19th-

century French art traces the development of Monet s practice, from his early work as a caricaturist to the late paintings of waterlilies and his garden at Giverny. Rubin explores the cultural currents that helped to shape Monet s work: the utopian thought that gave rise to his politics; his interest in Japanese prints, gardening, and trends in the decorative arts; and his relationship with earlier French landscape painters as well as such contemporaries as Manet and Renoir.