In 1919, when Monet was living almost as a recluse at Giverny, not far from Vernon-su-Seine, he had a visit from Fernand Leger, who saw him as "a shortish gentleman in a panama hat and elegant light-gray suit of English cut￯﾿ﾽ He had a large white beard, a pink face and little eyes that were bright and cheerful but with perhaps a slight hint of mistrust￯﾿ﾽ" Both the visual and the literary portraits of Monet depict him as a unstable, restless figure. Monet's abrupt changes of mood, his constant dissatisfaction with himself, his spontaneous decisions, stormy emotions and cold meticulousness, his consciousness of himself as a personality moulded by the preoccupations of his age, set against his extreme individualish - taken together these features elucidate much in Monet's creative processes and attitudes towards his own work.