Through the generosity of Mrs. Donop de Monchy (see Monet’s Friends) and Michel Monet, the Marmottan Monet Museum owns the largest Monet collection, from Impression, Sunrise to Giverny's Water Lilies.

This collection, presented in a room specially built for this purpose, gives the public the unique opportunity to admire all the significant stages of the master painter's career and follow the evolution of his technique: from his youth caricatures of Le Havre’s personalities or Parisian critics, to the paintings inspired by his Giverny garden.

The 1966 Michel Monet donation immediately turned the museum into the custodian of the largest Monet collection in the world. The collection is all the more historic, since it came directly from the artist's descendants.

Among others the collection holds the pieces painted on the Normand coast: the Trouville beach, Camille, and the movement's eponymous painting Impression, Sunrise; the Argenteuil pieces: walks or railway bridges; the views of Paris: the Tuileries, the Saint-Lazare station; the travel memories: the London Parliament, the Charing Cross Bridge; the water lilies, Japanese bridges, and rose alleys that will lead to the Grandes Décorations.