The program explores the life and works of the great painter Claude Monet, who is often described as the founding figure of the Impressionist movement. By looking at Monet's life, Tim Marlow discusses how the Impressionist movement was formed and how its members shocked the establishment by breaking away from the traditional old style of painting. Through some of his most famous paintings, Tim Marlow recounts Monet's early struggles and his eventual...

"The young Mary Cassatt never thought moving to Paris after the Civil War to be an artist was going to be easy, but when, after a decade of work, her submission to the Paris Salon is rejected, Mary's fierce determination wavers. Her father is begging her to return to Philadelphia to find a husband before it is too late, her sister Lydia is falling mysteriously ill, and worse, Mary is beginning to doubt herself. Then one evening a friend introduces...

Boston painter Claire Roth has survived financially by painting reproductions, so when influential gallery owner Aiden Markel arrives with a bizarre proposal--her own show if she will forge a copy of a Degas, one of the pictures stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum--she says yes. As she works, Claire and Aiden become lovers, but she doesn't tell him about her discovery that the stolen Degas is itself a copy. This knowledge is Claire's lifeline...

Profoundly influenced by the Renaissance painters, Hilaire Degas pioneered precision of line and the use of the human form in space within the Impressionist school. A Paris-born pupil of Ingres, Degas produced such masterpieces as Rehearsal of the Ballet and The Cotton Exchange. This unique study of his life and times includes delightful new footage of the Royal Ballet, Birmingham, England.

When is an impressionist not an impressionist? When he's Edgar Degas. He shows his works with Cassatt, Monet, and Renoir, but never considered his art to be 'impressionist' art. Why not? Young viewers will learn the reasons from an animated Degas himself as they watch him tell the story of his life and artistic career.