Mad Enchantment – Claude Monet and the painting of the Water Lilies

2 September 2020

Zoom lecture at  5 pm

Monet began his iconic large-scale images of his water pond in Giverny at a time of personal turmoil and sadness in 1914. Then in his mid-seventies, he was one of the world’s most famous and successful painters. However, he had virtually given up painting following the deaths of both his wife and his eldest son, and a diagnosis of cataracts. Nonetheless, it was during this period of sorrow, ill health and creative uncertainty that – as the guns roared on the Western Front – he began the most demanding and innovative paintings he had ever attempted. This illustrated lecture examines the personal and aesthetic motivations behind Monet’s immense canvases and their legacy in twentieth-century art.