Claude Monet is best known as a leader of the Impressionists, his paintings defining the style that triggered a revolution in art. During the eighty-six years of his life, Monet never rested, and was always driven by the urge to paint. And more than two thousand paintings survive from six highly creative decades.

Despite being a celebrity among France's political and cultural elite, Monet never became complacent. Even in his seventies and eighties he was still producing paintings that astounded the art world. Monet's work remains highly influential - his abstraction, gestural strokes and expressive colour capturing the imagination of generation after generation of artists.