By 1914, the noisy battles that marked the birth of the rebellious group of Impressionist artists had long become history, and the young rebels who provoked them — those who had not yet left this world — had turned into gray-bearded patriarchs of French painting. Claude Monet, who had turned 73, settled in Giverny, where he arranged his personal paradise garden with artificial ponds and cultivated lilies. French newspapers informed readers that the famous master had retired. Yet the newspapers hurried to write Monet off. Despite personal and global upheavals, despite ill health, self-doubt, and advanced age, the artist began to undertake the most ambitious artistic project of his entire career — a grand cycle of landscapes featuring water lilies.