Giverny, France and Monet’s Garden

    Giverny is a commune in the Northern French department Eure. The village is located on the right bank of the river Seine at its confluence with the river Epte. It was here that the painter Claude Monet ended up in search of a quiet place to settle down. Despite being acknowledged as a leader of the Impressionist painting movement, his reputation was confined to a small circle. He wanted to move to a place for his extended family to live: his lover, Alice Hoschedé, her six children, and his own two sons. 

    Giverny was then a small community of some three hundred inhabitants, nestled in the Seine valley, forty miles north-west of Paris. It was thanks to a wedding that Claude Monet discovered the house at Giverny in the spring of 1883. His train made an unscheduled stop to let the wedding party on board and, enchanted by what he saw from the window, Monet disembarked. He spotted the largest house in the village: Le Pressoir (The Cider Press House) and saw right away that it would make the perfect home. He grew a garden and waterlily pond on his property, tending and expanding it to create a better scene to paint from his own backyard, perfecting it for the rest of his life. Through the course of of his life Monet saw both Giverny and his garden develop as he painted the scenery around him. 

  Claude Monet, Morning on the Seine near Giverny 

1897

 Oil on canvas 

 Met Collection

Monet loved painting his surrounding. He began painting his Mornings on the Seine series in 1896 and finished in 1897, producing 21 paintings in the series. What renders this series like no other is that it records the dawn on one single motif, moment by moment, within one period. Monet painted the scenes from a boat that he had converted into a floating studio. He would rise at dawn in order to paint the changing effects of light as the sun came up.

Claude Monet, The Artist's Garden at Vétheuil

1881

Oil on Canvas

Ailsa Mellon Bruce Collection

By the early 1880s, when this work was painted, Monet had become increasingly interested in the painted surface itself and less concerned with capturing a spontaneous effect of light and atmosphere. 
Monet planted gardens wherever he lived. When he first moved to his Giverny property he turned the original kitchen garden into an expansive rose garden with trellises. Later, after much work and persuasion of the public, he acquired property with a small pond across the nearby railroad. He turned it into his waterlily garden, diverting the Epte river to broaden its borders. “This aquatic wonderland and the flower garden across the road became his principal preoccupation for the last twenty-six years of his life. When he rented this house at Vétheuil, he made arrangements with the owner to landscape the terraces, which lead down to the Seine. The boy with the wagon is Monet's young son, and on the steps behind him are other members of his extended household.

Claude Monet, Bridge Over a Pond of Water Lilies 
1899
Oil on canvas
Met Collection

Monet spent the last quarter century of his life painting the surface of his waterlily pond and delving deep into paintings of his garden. Monet had let his garden grow up a little bit before beginning painting his waterlilies. He then specifically moved on to his pool with its Japanese bridge, creating twelve paintings from a frontal view, completed in 1899. By 1900, he had also added six paintings from an oblique view. Monet used the vibrance and fluidity of light most palpably in his paintings of the Japanese bridge. He had always loved the fluidity of water and now gloried in merging the fluidity of water and light in the reflections of nature in his pond.

Germaine Hoschedé, Lili Butler, Mme Joseph Durand-Ruel, Georges Durand-Ruel, Claude Monet at the water lily pond in Giverny

1900

Black and white photograph

The National Gallery, London

To Monet, his garden was more valuable than most anything else. He loved to show it off and had a great many friends, especially the artists he had known from his youth.Monet was perhaps the only great artist to create a landscape in order to paint it. He continued to expand his garden throughout his life and even widen his pond to create better perspectives for paintings and photographs. Had he not been a painter, Monet would likely have been a botanist; he loved gardening that much. He started planting local plants, then broadened to flora from around the world. He had a team of outdoor workers to keep his garden pristine and alive. This garden was “for the pleasure of the eye and also for motifs to paint.”

Claude Monet, Water Lilies

1919

 Oil on canvas

                                                        Met Collection

When Monet first painted his waterlily garden in the mid-1890s, his paintings we mainly descriptive; however over the years his paintings of the pool came to be “more intimate and to evoke the infinite.” Monet found a sense of peace within nature and sought after it. His garden became a sort of zen where he found continuous meditation. “I have always loved sky and water, leaves and flowers,” he said, “I found them in abundance in my little pool.” Monet first painted waterlily studies in 1896-97 for decorations that would fill a dining room. Later in the 1900s he painted these large panoramic lily scenes that stretched across walls.

Claude Monet in his garden at Giverny
1920
Black and white photograph
Musee Clemenceau, Paris, France

Plein air painting is the act of painting at site (in the open air) instead of inside a studio. Painting en plein air was Monet’s favorite way to experience his garden and art at the same time. He loved feeling the texture of his paint and making his brushstrokes visible, displaying the process of painting as well as the
subject. Monet’s bold color choices and visible brushstrokes gave his paintings an unfinished look compared to other artists of his time. In earlier years he had earned the title of an impressionist painter by some demeaning art critics who called his work an “impression” as it looked more like a sketch than the realistic look of the day. He led the way for other artists in the Impressionist Movement. 

Claude Monet in his studio in Giverny
1920
Black and white photograph
UNT digital library

The many large studies for the Orangerie murals, as well as other unprecedented and unique works painted in the water garden between 1916 and 1925, were almost unknown until the 1950s but are now 
distributed throughout the major private collections and museums of the world. The last years of Claude Monet's life were absorbed in preparing the panneaux of The Grandes Decorations. He continually repainted them, discarding some canvases but always starting new ones. Despite failing eyesight due to cataracts, Monet continued to paint almost until his death in 1926. In the new year, he had selected 22 panels to
be installed in two elliptical rooms in Musée de l'Orangerie in Paris. Monet did not live to see his panneaux
installed, but, as he wished, the canvases were removed from their stretchers and affixed directly to the 
curving walls.