With a painter’s eye, French impressionist painter Claude Monet often combined flowers of like colors and allowed them to grow without constraint across the sprawling grounds of his home in Giverny, France.
The water garden, inspired by the Japanese prints Monet collected, forms a mystical aquatic environment ensconced among weeping willows, wisteria, and thickets of bamboo. Originally, a local craftsman constructed the green bridge, a familiar feature in several of his celebrated paintings.
As much a gardener as he was an artist, Monet landscaped the elaborate vignettes of flowers, water, and trees surrounding his iconic Normandy farmhouse, pictured above, with the passionate intent of capturing them on canvas.
Fervently devoted to his expansive flower garden, shown above, called Le Clos Normand, Monet was obsessed with creating the vibrant compositions of blooms surrounding his property. Few are aware that the artist truly planted to paint and that he halted his artistic ambitions in order to dig, seed, and weed every day, beginning at dawn.
Although Monet was known to display masterworks by Renoir, Cézanne, and Manet on his bedroom walls, above left, he considered the views of his gardens to be equally captivating. His unconventional artistic vision was apparent even in the kitchen, above right, where whimsical blue and white tiles dazzle the room with color and pattern.
Monet’s studio, above, was a private sanctuary where he worked in solitude after tending his beloved flowerbeds. Dedicated to cultivating his subjects in nature before rendering them on canvas, the painter was able to profoundly impact the emotional depth and intensity of his work.
At any time of year, riotous sprays of seasonal blooms enthrall visitors strolling the pathways at Giverny, above.
Text Jeanne Delathouder
Photography Kate Sears
To discover more impressionistic beauty, see “The Poetry of Giverny” on page 57 of the May/June 2013 issue of Victoria.