Jackie Wullschläger won the £5,000 (about $6,325) Elizabeth Longford Prize for Historical Biography for Monet: The Restless Vision (to be published in the U.S. by Knopf on September 24). The winner also receives a copy of Longford's memoir, The Pebbled Shore.
Chair of the judges Roy Foster commented: "Jackie Wullschläger's life of Claude Monet is not only an enthralling portrait of a powerful personality; she shows how the 'restlessness' pinpointed in her subtitle drove Monet to reformulate memory and time in his great serial paintings. The process culminated with the legendary water-lilies series, but Wullschläger's deeply-researched book traces the development of his vision back to its origins. She surveys and illuminates a complex and passionate personal life, and the networks of friendship and affinity which connected him to the worlds of Clemenceau, Bergson and Proust, as well as the fellowship of other Impressionists.
"Her biography not only shows the development of a revolutionary artistic vision and the slow process of understanding it; she sets the process against a brilliant evocation of the rich and multi-layered world of French culture in the late nineteenth century and Belle Époque. Historically insightful, psychologically perceptive, and consummately readable, Monet: The Restless Vision fulfilled everything the judges of the Elizabeth Longford Prize look for in ground-breaking historical biography."