Traces the career and style of French artist Edgar Degas and presents and briefly describes more than a hundred of his paintings and sculptures.

The spectacular transformation of Paris during the nineteenth century into a city of tree-lined boulevards and public parks both redesigned the capital and inspired the era's great Impressionist artists. The renewed landscape gave crowded, displaced urban dwellers green spaces to enjoy, while suburbanites and country dwellers began cultivating their own flower gardens--trends that spread throughout Europe and even to America. As exotic botanical specimens...

"The life of the great French painter, one of the founders of Impressionism, is narrated in lush comic art reminiscent of his style. From the Salon des Refuses ("Salon of the Rejected") and many struggling years without recognition, money and yet a family to raise, all the way to great success, critically and financially, Monet pursued insistently one vision: catching the light in painting, refusing to compromise on this ethereal pursuit. It cost...

Julie Manet, the niece of Edouard Manet and the most famous female Impressionist artist, Berthe Morisot, was born in Paris on 14th November 1878 into a wealthy and cultured milieu at the height of the Impressionist era. Many young girls still confide their inner thoughts to diaries and it is hardly surprising that, with her mother giving all her encouragement, Julie would prove to be no exception to the rule. At the age of ten, Julie began writing...

"In an innovative approach, Richard Thomson considers Claude Monet's paintings of buildings in their environment, offering a reappraisal of an artist more often associated with landscapes, seascapes and gardens. Buildings fulfilled various roles in Monet's canvases; some are chiefly compositional devices while others throw into sharp contrast the forms of man-made construction against the irregularity of nature, or suggest the absent presence of humans....