Monday, aka “monet-day” “Monet & Architecture” is not just rare, it’s unique!. Book now: nationalgallery.co.uk/products/ticke…

Tuesday The last time the UK hosted a Monet exhibition like this was almost 20 years ago! Until 29 July 2018

Did you know? Monet made his name painting outdoors – "en plein air" as art critics call it. Painting on the spot, rather than in the studio, gave his paintings their vital, naturalistic style.

It’s more than 20 years since the last Monet show in London, which promises to make up for lost time with 78 paintings from all around the world – 19 from private collections, rarely loaned and rarely shown. This is a chance to see some of Monet’s lesser known masterpieces,

Wednesday “Everyone discusses my art and pretends to understand, as if it were necessary to understand, when it is simply necessary to love.”

This exhibition is in three parts: The Village & the Picturesque, The City & the Modern, and The Monument & the Mysterious. The first one focuses on semi-rural scenes in his native France. These paintings are wonderful but in The City & the Modern we see another side of Monet.

Thursday “I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers.”

His later paintings, in Giverny, feel like havens of serenity. These earlier works remind us that he lived through a time of frenetic and traumatic change.

"When you go out to paint, try to forget what objects you have before you, Merely think, here is a little square of blue, here an oblong of pink, here a streak of yellow, and paint it just as it looks to you." I’ve never heard a better description of the way one ought to paint.

Friday Week-end is coming, what`s better than Monet to start it with the right impression?

Monet’s greatest architectural project was his series of paintings of Rouen Cathedral. "There’s a tremendous visual sensuality to the paintings," says Thomson. It was here that his unique relationship with architecture reached its zenith.

"Other painters paint a bridge, a house, a boat," wrote Monet. "I want to paint the air that surrounds the bridge, the house, the boat – the beauty of the light in which they exist.’