Recently I found these three books titled Monet, Durer, and Leonardo for sale in a dusty box in someone’s garage. They were priced at 1 dollar each and I couldn’t resist. Monet is one of my favorite artists, so I decided to start with that one. I’m not far into it, as I have about three other books already started, but it has been very interesting so far. The book consists of an introduction, properly titled Claude Monet. William C. Seitz explains Monet’s childhood, his personality, his influence on Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, and probably more that I haven’t had the chance to read yet.

This is followed by 40 colorplates with descriptions of the piece (right). Just by flipping through the pages, it seems as though the author decided to steer away from Monet’s most famous pieces and included a lot of his lesser known landscapes. While I do love the water lilies in his garden, I can appreciate the chance to learn about more of Monet’s subjects.

One of my favorite little tidbits that I’ve learned from the book so far is that this (left) is a drawing done by Monet while in school because he would pass the time in his “prison” by drawing pictures of his teachers.