Mad Enchantment
by Ross King, Bloomsbury, £25
By the time Claude Monet embarked on his daring series of water lily canvases he was a celebrated and extremely wealthy man. Decades earlier, Monet’s experiments had provoked more than their share of outrage and insult – one critic described a seascape as “less skilful than crude wallpaper” – but Monet’s brand of Impressionism was now part of the artistic mainstream. Some even regarded it as rather passé: Matisse was always a fan, but the cocksure Cubists and Pointillists were markedly less enthusiastic.
