Monet: Itinerant of Light

by Salva Rubio

• ISBN10: 1681121409
• ISBN13: 9781681121406
• Publish Date: 1 October 2017
• Publish Status: Active
• Imprint: Nantier Beall Minoustchine Publishing
• Format: eBook
• Pages: 112
• Language: English

Reviews

[Quirky Cat]

I received a copy of Monet: Itinerant of Light from NetGalley in exchange for a fair and honest review.

Monet: Itinerant of Light is a graphic novel telling us the life and story of one of my favorite artists, Claude Monet. If you’ve ever found yourself wondering about his life or at least wishing for more background for his painting history, then this is certainly a good start.
Obviously by the very nature of it being a graphic novel, it can only go so deep as a biography as an artist. Even so, it does a wonderful job on the whole, with the writers and artists trying to help set the tone for how Monet was feeling during a specific time, based on the events occurring in his life. In this way they tied everything together, giving us one cohesive piece of work and (hopefully) understanding of the painter most of us have at least heard of.
EFA did an absolutely stunning job imitating Monet’s works, something I’m having trouble getting over, and thus feel the need to mention. His use of illustrations (again, in Monet’s very own style) to tell us the struggles and stories of Monet…it’s simply breathtaking. I can’t say enough good things about this or even the slight artistic choices he made throughout.
The author, Salva Rubio did a pretty decent job of presenting us the facts as unbiased as possible (which I know can be very difficult when writing a biography). While the way I’m describing it makes it sound dry, let me assure you that isn’t the case. Rubio simply isn’t passing judgment or praise on any of Monet’s actions, merely repeating what research has been turned up as facts (and doing so in a fairly concise manner).
I hope Rubio and EFA team up to create biographies for other artists out there; I would absolutely love to see that. In the mean time I’ll have to settle for simply being happy that this one exists.

For more reviews, check out Quirky Cat's Fat Stacks

[annieb123]

Originally published on my blog: Nonstop Reader.

Monet: Itinerant of Light is a graphic novel biography of the great painter and visionary Claude Monet. He had such a difficult and often painful life and seen backward through our lens from the future, it's amazing that he managed as much productivity as he did. The book was written by artist/historian Salva Rubio and was released 1 Nov, 2017 from Papercutz.

There's a lot of straight historical fact in this biography of course, but it's the non-judgemental sensitively handled human aspects of a complex man and the people in his orbit which lifts this book from a straight biography to an illuminating glimpse into the past culture and society in which he lived and worked. I think for most of us who are not completely obsessed by something, it's difficult to understand even to a small degree the mindset of someone who is. One of the quotes, directly from Monet himself, referring to painting the deathbed scene of his beloved wife, Camille Doncieux struck me deeply.

“ You can’t imagine,” Monet replied to me, “how true everything you just said really is. It’s what obsesses me, torments me, and fills my days with joy. To such an extent that one day, having found myself at the bedside of a dead woman who had been and still was very dear to me, I caught myself, as I stared down at her tragic face, casually wondering about the pattern, about the gradual loss of color that death had brought to her lifeless features. Hues of blue, yellow, grey? That’s how low I had stooped. It’s a natural reflex to want to reproduce the last image of the one who has just left us forever. But before the idea came to paint the features I was so deeply attached to, my natural instinct was to react to color first, and my reflexes were leading me, in spite of myself, to subconscious rote behavior that swallows up my day-to-day life. Like a beast grinding at the mill. Feel sorry for me, my friend.” (Clemenceau, G. (2010) : Claude Monet “ intime ”, Parkstone Press International, New York, p. 24).

Wow.

It is always fraught to use a visual medium to explain visual art. The illustrations in this biography are beautifully rendered by EFA and pay homage to (and mirror in many clever ways) the original subjects they depict. Many of the page setups are explained in the afterword: Monet’s Mirror: Behind the Canvas. These pages (about 15% of the total content) give the background and supporting information for the graphic novel and also include pictures and biographical info about the artists and models whose lives Monet touched in his long and productive life.

This is a beautifully written and illustrated and (so far as I am able to ascertain) unvarnished and accurate biography of Monet. 112 pages, hardcover and Kindle/comiXology versions.

Four stars
Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher.