There is an air of satisfaction in that placid figure dominat- 
ing the pleasant apartment. It is good to live long enough to 
see one's radical work accepted and approved. Far from 
living in the past however, this great man is vitally interested 
in present problems and has planned enough work now to take 
him twenty years to finish. There lies the secret of his vigor, 
bodily comfort and that keen zest in creating. Can it be that 
one reason for this virile old age is the fact that Monet has 
always lived in the out-of-doors ? He has not only lived in the 
country and painted there, but he has worked in his garden ; he 
has had close contact with the soil; he has had the practical 
as well as the aesthetic side of gardening. One of his friends 
writes of his "magnificent avidity, his marvellous, inappeasable 
appetite which has ever prevented him from resting after 
success and will prevent him until the end." This was written 
thirteen years ago and is equally true today. This friend adds : 
"When our little group was in direct difiiculties, Sisley 
represented good humor and Claude Monet always represented 
confidence in the future." 
We talk of the whereabouts of Monet's many canvases 
and of the demand for them from the South American Republics 
and the Scandinavian Museums. It pleases him to hear of that 
charming Salon hung with crimson brocade where our 
Connoisseur has placed thirteen of his Monets showing many 
phases of the Master from that early Garden of Argenteuil in 
1872 to the Venice of 1908. It pleases him to know that these 
pictures are freely shown to the public and that tliousands of 
people every week look on them with delight. His own head, 
has it ever been done? No, not lately. What an opportunity 
at this moment for M. Andree, whose portrait of Renoir has 
just been acquired for the Art Institute, Chicago. But the 
Master refuses to commit himself and only smiles at the 
suggestion. 
What is the master doing now? Our little group saunters 
through that bewitching garden to its remotest corner where 
hidden by trees and shrubs and blossoming vines another, a 
fire-proof studio of huge dimensions has been built to house 
the canvases which now occupy his time. For ten years Monet 
has done no easel pictures. Here he paints what he prefers 
and as he likes, big, decorative, brilliant paintings full of color 
and movement, full of a subtle interplay of light and shade, 
full of delicacy and strength. With the utmost ease the great 
man, assisted by the others pushes about and arranges the 
huge canvasses, some of them 19 feet long, until they touch 
in a circle around us and we are apparently on an island in 
a dark bluey-green pool with massive tree trunks rising at 
intervals to frame sweeping shadowy willow boughs reflected 
in limpid waters ; billowy clouds are dancing among the water 
8 
