Was there any pressing need, apart from the considerable (if unfashionable) pleasure of seeing a lot of fine pictures, for the Art Institute of Chicago to organize a major Monet retrospective, his largest exhibition to date, drawn from public and private collections all over the world?[1] Over the past few years, the art of Monet and his colleagues has been probed from every possible direction. Recently, "Origins of Impressionism" studied the young Monet and his fellow New Painters in relation to both the establishment and the radical artists of their day, while the Art Institutes own brilliant "series" exhibition examined Monets repetitions and variations of his favorite motifs. The lush survey of his late work, "Monets Years at Giverny; was a while ago--1978--but a representative mini-Monet retrospective can be seen any day at the Metropolitan, not to mention the spectacular three-panel Water Lilies at MOMA, which attracts a perpetual worshipfu ...

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