A vividly rendered portrait of both the rise of Impressionism and of Monet, the artist at the center of the movement. It is, above all, a love story of the highest romantic order.
Based closely on the life of the painter Paul Gaugin, this book relates the life of Charles Strickland, a London stockbroker who abandons his home and career in mid-life to live as an artist in Tahiti.
Renoir is inspired to paint "Luncheon of the boating party" when his other work is criticized by Emile Zole, and while doing so is drawn into lives of the thirteen people featured in it as they enjoy a Parisian summer during the late 1800s.