France 1876. A struggling, unknown Paris artist. His name, Claude Monet. A Brie Valley chateau at the peak of its beauty. A wealthy art collector, owner of the chateau, and earliest patron of a rebellious group of French painters becoming known as Impressionists. A commission to paint four wall panels for the rotunda walls of the art collector's chateau. Scenes of the property: the pond, the rose garden, the white turkeys who roam the meadow. An illicit affair conducted in a small lodge by a willowswept riverbank. A married woman riddled with guilt and doubt. A married man torn between loyalty and desire. Protective barriers. Questions. Vague, elusive explanations regarding combined households, former lives, eight children, and moving, always moving; to Argenteuil, to Vetheuil, to Poissy, to Giverny.
Veiled in the shadows of art history for more than a hundred years, the never before told love story of Alice Hoschede and Claude Monet is brought to compelling life in IMPRESSION SUNRISE. Through decades of struggle, indecision, and human failing, the truth of its details only hinted at, more often completely ignored, the intimate true story of Impressionism's most famous painter and the elegant heiress he falls in love with and lives with for more than thirty years is told in this touching historical novel rich with the passion and tenderness of forbidden love and the pain and loss brought on by long years of struggle, secrecy, and indiscretion as through these same years a renegade band of artists being called Impressionists appears on the lofty, impenetrable Paris art scene, Claude Monet their leader, his similarly unknown Impressionist colleagues bearing the names of Pierre Auguste Renoir, Edgar Degas, Camille Pissarro, Berthe Morisot, Alfred Sisley, Paul Cezanne, and Gustave Caillebotte, none of these courageous artists more important to the eventual success of Claude Monet than the intelligent, steadfast woman who is his lover, companion, most trusted advisor, eventually his wife, and the extraordinary advocate who finally, in IMPRESSION SUNRISE emerges to assume her rightful place as a central figure in the legendary development and success of the career of Claude Monet and the beloved art movement of Impressionism.
