Most of us are familiar with Claude Monet's name. His name and paintings kept coming up every other year or so, either as stolen or breaking another auction record. The latest is $85 millions by an anonymous buyer for one of his large waterlily paintings.

Le Bassin aux Nympheas was part of a four-work collection of waterlily paintings that Monet put up for sale during his lifetime. He saw the oil paintings of his water garden as a work in progress, and rarely sold them.

Claude Monet, also known as Claude Oscar Monet was a founder of French impressionist painting, and the most consistent and prolific practitioner of the movement's philosophy of expressing one's perceptions before nature, especially as applied to plein-air landscape painting. The term Impressionism is derived from the title of his painting Impression, Soleil Levant or Impression, Sunrise. Known to the general American public as the "expensive" Monet's painting stolen in the Thomas Crown Affair movie. The painting in the movie is not Impression, Sunrise, but actually a bad copy of a Parlement, Coucher de Soleil or Houses of Parliament, Sunset.

And now, please join me for a tour of Monet's Virtual Museum Gallery.