In the course of a long and exceptionally creative life, Claude Monet revolutionized painting and made some of the most iconic images in western art. Yet behind this great and famous artist is a volatile, voracious, nervous yet reckless man, largely unknown.

Jackie Wullschläger's enthralling biography, based on thousands of never-before translated letters and unpublished sources, is the first account of Monet's turbulent private life and how it determined his expressive, sensuous, sensational painting. He was as obsessional in his love affairs as in his love of nature, and changed his art decisively three times when the woman at the centre of his life changed. His work also responded intensely to outside cataclysms - the Dreyfus Affair, the First World War. Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau was his closest friend. Rich intellectual currents connected him to writers from Zola to Proust; affection and rivalry to Renoir, Pissarro and Manet.

Monet said he was driven 'wild with the need to put down what I experience'. This rich and moving biography immerses us in that passionate experience, transforming our understanding of the man, his paintings and the fullness of his achievement.