Paris in the 1860s and 1870s was supposedly a centre of modern life. This book argues that the art of Manet and his contemporaries was an attempt to give form to that modernity.

"In an innovative approach, Richard Thomson considers Claude Monet's paintings of buildings in their environment, offering a reappraisal of an artist more often associated with landscapes, seascapes and gardens. Buildings fulfilled various roles in Monet's canvases; some are chiefly compositional devices while others throw into sharp contrast the forms of man-made construction against the irregularity of nature, or suggest the absent presence of humans....

Sixth-grade art student Logan and his cousin Becca find themselves transported back to 1856 Le Havre, France, where they must somehow introduce the young caricaturist Claude Monet to the local artist Eugène Boudin, who history says convinced Monet to make the change to oil paints.