Monet's 'secret' art collection on show for first time at the Marmottan Monet Museum

The “secret” art collection amassed by Claude Monet, the father of Impressionism, went on display for the first time in Paris on Thursday, 90 years after the great painter’s death. French art historians spent four years tracking down the startling collection of work by contemporaries including Renoir, Cezanne, Pissarro and Delacroix that Monet secretly bought. “I am selfish. My collection is for myself only… and for a few friends,” the master once told journalists who called on him at his country home at Giverny in Normandy, whose remarkable gardens draw half a million visitors a year. “We knew really very little about the collection,” said Marianne Mathieu, one of the curators of the show at the Marmottan Monet Museum, which has brought together the bulk of the collection.