Claude Monet: A Life in Letters

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The first major English-language publication dedicated to Monet’s letters, expertly selected and richly illustrated with his paintings.

Claude Monet’s letters – to his friends, family, fellow artists, patrons and gallerists – offer an unmatched glimpse into the artist’s life, revealing his passions, anxieties and frank opinions, and expanding our view of his working life and practice. From his formative years to fame at the end of his life, this selection of letters is accompanied by profiles of his correspondents, expert introductions and comprehensive annotations. Illustrated with some of Monet’s best-known paintings, contemporary photographs and reproductions of some of the letters themselves, his world is revealed in words and images as never before.

Published to mark the centenary of the artist’s death, this is a fresh opportunity to explore the life and letters of the ‘father of Impressionism’ in his own words.
Extent: 552 pp
Format: Hardback
Illustrations: 156
Publication date: 2026-10-08
Size: 24.0 x 16.5 cm
ISBN: 9780500030905
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Press Reviews

The 417 letters collected in this handsome volume run from the everyday – an appeal against a speeding ticket – to the marvellous … The Monet summoned up by the letters is somewhere between Mr Micawber and Mr Pooter … But in almost every letter, like the sun breaking through the fog, come glimpses of Monet the painter: alive to light, enthralled by landscape, thrilled by the sky above and the water below. The letters illuminate in his words his obsessive dedication to his art and his lifelong fascination with light, sky, water and time
The Times

A scholarly and volatile portrait of the artist in his own words … with their well-chosen illustrations, these letters give us a granular portrait of a life of ceaseless striving and self-criticism in which the personal and painterly were inextricably braided
Spectator



About the Authors

Teresa Krasny is the lead editor of Claude Monet: A Life in Letters. She has been the director and curator of The Howard Collection since 2011. Prior to that, she was a director and head of sale in the Impressionist & Modern department at Christie’s London, having previously held specialist positions in the Post-war & Contemporary Art department and the Old Master Drawings department at Christie’s Paris. She is a co-founder and former chair of the International Catalogue Raisonné Association (ICRA) and founded the Edgar Degas: Catalogue Raisonné of Paintings and Works on Paper digital project. Frances Fowle is Emeritus Professor of 19th-century art at the University of Edinburgh. Flavie Durand-Ruel is the great-great-granddaughter of Monet’s art dealer, Paul Durand-Ruel. She is Director of FDR Fine Arts and has undertaken extensive research of the Durand-Ruel Archives. Karen Serres is Senior Curator of paintings at the Courtauld Gallery, London. Sylvie Patry is a former Deputy Director at the Musée d’Orsay and head of the Musée d’Orsay’s and Musée de l’Orangerie’s anniversary celebrations.

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