These three variations provide an opportunity for Louis Gillet – who knew Claude Monet – to help readers gain new insight into the man and his work. Between these pages, they will naturally find references to specific paintings, but also to styles, poetry, landscapes, use of light and colour, and to the studies and thoughts which preoccupied the renowned Giverny painter throughout his life.
This is an ideal introduction to Claude Monet's paintings, enhanced by the author's flawless expertise, uniquely enthusiastic sensitivity, and admirably precise and lively prose, which give this book its incomparable appeal.

Louis Gillet, an École normale graduate, Catholic intellectual and former curator of the Musée de Chaalis who was inducted into the French Academy in 1935, was a friend of Paul Claudel. He penned studies on the history of art (La Peinture des XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles, La Peinture française. Moyen Âge et Renaissance, La Peinture de Poussin à David) and monographies on Raphael, Watteau and Monet. He wrote eloquent articles which appeared in many periodicals and journals, most notably in La Revue des Deux Mondes, to which he devoted some forty years of his working life involving areas of study in which he had an impassioned interest: art and literature. He was the first author to make the writings of James Joyce accessible to the general public.