Rouen cathedral © J

Rouen cathedral © J Flange, Rouen Normandie Tourisme et Congrès Monet’s wife Camille, dressed in a kimono, the artist was greatly influenced by Japanese art - Claude Monet, 1874 Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons almost smell them. He also worked in London, completing evocative studies of Westminster and the River Thames. Giverny was not Monet’s only home in the Seine valley. As a young, hard-up artist, Monet moved frequently around Paris, often to escape creditors, but gradually he was able to move west along the Seine. His house and garden at Giverny, where he lived for more than 40 years from 1883 are the second most visited attraction in Normandy. But Monet’s two previous homes are also now open to visitors at Argenteuil (1874 to 1878) and Vétheuil (1878 to 1881). © Claire Vincent - Claude Monet à Vétheuil Monet’s garden - like a living palette of colour Monet married twice. He married his favourite model Camille Doncieux (she features in 50 of Monet’s paintings) in 1870, three years after the birth of their son Jean, their second son Michel was born in 1878. Camille tragically died at their home in Vétheuil aged just 32. His second wife Alice was first married to art collector and department store magnate Ernest Hoschedé, who commissioned several works from Monet - including ‘Impression, soleil levan.’’ Alice and Claude married in 1892 after Ernest’s death, living at Giverny with her six children and his two sons. Alice’s daughter Blanche became Monet’s pupil and married his son (also her stepbrother) Jean. Gardening was a passion before Monet moved to Giverny. Monet’s garden at Vétheuil features in many of his paintings and when he moved to Giverny, Monet soon began organising a major transformation, enlarging the pond, and filling it with water lilies. He wrote daily instructions to a team of seven gardeners about the design, planting layouts and purchasing of new Monet’s bright yellow dining room plants to create a garden that was like a living paint palette, providing him with an endless source of artistic inspiration. Monet loved good food, cars and Japanese prints. Mealtimes at Giverny were sacrosanct, starting at 6am with a breakfast that included andouillette (tripe sausage) and white wine in the bright yellow dining room. And he was fascinated by cars, sometimes driving 200km to Lamotte-Beuvron for an apple tart made by the Tatin sisters! He was also a passionate collector of Japanese prints. Monet painted a series of Rouen Cathedral paintings - Claude Monet (1894), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons Monet never tired of the same view. Captivated by the effects of different lights on a single subject, from the 1890s onwards Monet worked almost exclusively on series of paintings such as Meules (haystacks) and Peupliers (Poplars), recording the nuances of light under varying conditions. He pictured the façade of Rouen Cathedral more than 30 times, sitting in an upstairs room above what is now the Rouen Tourist Office. Monet was his own harshest critic. He once wrote “My life has been nothing but a failure, and all that’s left for me to do is to destroy my paintings before I disappear,” and his wife Alice wrote to a friend in 1908 that “he punctures canvases every day.” In 1907, a show of his work in Paris had to be postponed after he took a knife to at least 15 of his water lily paintings. It’s estimated he destroyed as many as 500 paintings. The immersive water lily experience at the Orangerie in Paris was Monet’s idea. Monet was obsessed with his water lilies. He instructed his gardeners to wash and dust each lily pad, and he captured their beauty in more than 250 canvases. Immediately after the Armistice was signed at the end of 32 | The Good Life France The Good Life France | 33