l'Orangerie: upstairs, in 'the Sistine Chapel of Impressionism'

Slartibartfast in front of the centre panel of 'Waterlilies, a water study: Clouds' by Claude MONET (click to enlarge)

The blog owner in front of the left-most panel of 'Waterlilies, a water study: Clouds' by Claude MONET (click to enlarge)

Here is a website that, aside from the hard-sell, has a good clickable archive of paintings from throughout Monet's career: http://www.artofmonet.com/

A brief biography at Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Monet

If you can read French (or run page translation software), Wikipedia en Francais has an alternative bio with a greater emphasis on the evolution and chronology of Monet's paintings: http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monet

The Claude Monet Foundation, responsible for maintaining his home in Giverny for the public, has a wonderful site which allows you to see the water garden that was captured in the early 1920's on these Waterlillies panels:
http://www.fondation-monet.com/ (French and English sections)

About the gardens - an extract from the Foundation's page :

Its contribution to Claude Monet's oeuvre was a vital one. He came here repeatedly throughout his life, letting his imagination rove amid the complex interplay of water and light. Here he painted his first Waterlilies series, those marvellous canvases from which, in the closing period of his life, he was to distil the marvellous "Decorations" that rounded off the work of a entire lifetime and irresistibly foreshadowed - as Kandinsky so perceptively noted - all that was to come in abstract painting.

Constructed in 1916 on the site of a tumbledown cottage, the studio was designed to provide the master with a comfortable, well-lit setting for the large-scale "Waterlily Decorations"; at the urging of George Clemenceau he offered the finest of these series to the nation in 1922. The studio is thus the fountainhead of Claude Monet's artistic legacy. After falling into disrepair, it was restored at considerable expense with the aid of two major donations from Michel David Weill. The easels and some of the movable trestle tables are still there, as is the divan. The walls are hung with copies - magnificent reminders of the big canvases - donated by Gérard Delorme.