The French Impressionists are quite possibly the most loved artists in the history of art. Their value increases with each decade especially since the best works are in the hands of museums. Claude Monet paintings are at the top of list for dealers and collectors. His water lily paintings are some of the most beautiful abstract works in the world.

A master of color and nuance, he believed the eye should look beyond the superficial to the mystery of nature and the universe. Composition should be less about objects and more about the light surrounding the object. In this way he could establish a motif that defied cold realism and went to the heart of existence.

The house and garden of Monet have been preserved and are open to the public. Tourists flock to see his ponds with the Japanese bridge and the boat from which he painted many works. Visitors long to take away an impression of what the master was seeing, his art has only gained in popularity over the decades.

Two Impressionists of the nineteenth century are today considered the masters of modernism; Claude Monet and Paul Cezanne. Both continue to be revered by contemporary artists, emulated and studied. Both lived a long life in the countryside, painting what was familiar to them, not with anything remotely mannered, but with a fresh idea that held the future in its sight.

For Monet, there was nothing of importance in his life but painting. Even the flowers he loved served only as subject matter for painting. He did not hobnob with the great social thinkers on art nor did he dally around in cafes, drinking and expounding on the modes and methods of his art. He lived a solitary life dedicated to work. His work was about color relations he said it pursued him even in sleep.

The artist painted Rouen Cathedral in all the various lights, creating a constantly altering vision of it. In rendering this building under twenty different skies, he did nothing so much as show that to look at nature with accuracy requires a transformed perception. Each of the twenty patterns of light and color create an ordered universe. The cathedral remains a solid object; the atmosphere, the brightness of the sky determines the ever changing tableau. Through the eyes of a most exacting artist, we too are called upon to transcend ordinary vision.

Monet made it his life work to capture the fleeting natural world. His was a heightened awareness that created a marvelous spectacle. What may look like the portrayal of a haystack in a field was in effect, sunlight as it distributed itself over the earth, creating a hue structure that was scientific in its exactitude.

While others rendered trees, fields, buildings and paths, Monet painted the air surrounding the scene. It frustrated him at times; this subject could never be completely captured. In this way he moved toward abstraction and away from exact realism. What he was attempting could probably not be mastered with paint on canvas. He did not care; it was the process that enthralled him.

Working well into his 80s, each day presented him with a changing motif to be handled with a new eye. You might think he would become bored with the serial repetition. Not so. He never became stilted or formulaic even when his eyesight was fading in old age. His paintings remained innocent with the fresh vision of a child. Therein lies the genius of Claude Monet paintings. They captured the ephemeral in a miraculous way that will never grow stale.