On May 10, the National Gallery of Victoria will open this year’s highly anticipated Melbourne Winter Masterpieces exhibition, Monet’s Garden: The Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris.

Exclusive to the Melbourne, this stunning exhibition will feature more than sixty works devoted to Claude Monet’s iconic garden at Giverny.

Monet’s Garden traces the evolution of these garden motifs over a period of twenty years, revealing the transition of Monet’s purely Impressionist style to the more personal pictorial idiom that he adopted in later life.

NGV Director, Tony Ellwood, said the exhibition would feature Monet’s most well-known works, from a stunning suite of enormous waterlilies paintings to his iconic garden motifs, as well as some rarely seen late paintings.

“Monet’s Garden is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to experience the world of Monet and the garden that became his lifelong obsession.

“We are thrilled to collaborate with the Musée Marmottan, home to one of the largest collections of works by Monet in the world, to bring these masterpieces to Melbourne for the first time,” said Mr Ellwood.

The exhibition then takes visitors on a journey beginning with Monet’s arrival in Giverny in 1883 and the first steps taken towards the creation of the garden that would serve as inspiration for the remainder of Monet’s life.

Monet’s Garden: The Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris will be on at the National Gallery of Victoria from 10 May until 8 September 2013. Admission fees apply. Tickets now on sale.