Impressionism got its name from the title of a painting that Claude Monet (1840-1926) presented in 1874. More than any other artist, Monet was the creator of the impressive visual style of Impressionism, which has influenced the way we look at nature today. For sixty years, he continuously explored ways to translate his experiences into color, in images that take us from the cosmopolitan life of Paris in the 1860s to the isolation of his own water garden, which he painted in the final years of his life. John House's introduction to Monet's life and work presents a series of impressive illustrations that capture the artist's progress as he became increasingly focused on color and atmospheric effect, and the immediate studies of nature were replaced by paintings of greater richness and harmony, where the play of diverse colors replaced the traditional drawing and modeling of forms.