In the soft light of September, water lilies open in the afternoon. They need all the morning to decide it’s warm enough.
Flowers are tall, filling the beds with masses of vegetation and colors. Dahlias, sages, gauras, nicotianas, balsams are at their best, as well as the giant yellow helianthus. Asters will start soon.
The beautiful water garden created by the impressionist master Claude Monet at Giverny still inspires painters.
Monet’s house and gardens will re-open on March 24, 2017. I’m looking forward to it. It is such a joy to work daily in this beauty giving guided tours to wonderful people. I miss flowers so much. What about you?
Claude Monet, ‘L’homme au petit chapeau’ (The Man in the Small Hat) 1855/56, Art Institute of Chicago.
Monet started his career as a caricaturist. The Art Institute of Chicago keeps one of his most ancient drawings, this man in a small hat made when he was 15 years old. Because the title is so vague and the drawing rather respectful, we can imagine that this young person may have been Monet’s school mate. Later on, Monet became more offending by drawing what was not yet called the people of Le Havre, as we say in French: the upper middle class bourgeoisie of his city.
I must say this is not the Monet I like best. But it reflects the impulsive and rebellious personality of the painter. Twenty years later, it was Monet’s turn to be mocked, when he dared show his avant garde paintings at the first impressionist exhibition in Paris.
This is how liberty goes. Monet and his friends opened new fields of liberty. The freedom to paint how I like, what I like. The freedom to exhibit and find buyers.
But Monet wanted more. Later on Monet still fought for the admission of Manet’s ‘Olympia’ in the state collections. He didn’t paint for a year to dedicate to this mission. He wanted public recognition of this new freedom.
In matter of politics, Monet was not the kind of artist that withdraws in one’s studio. He was friend with Zola and supported him during the Dreyfus Affair, because he felt things were not fair and had much to do with anti-semitism.
This is how he lived, secluded in the village of Giverny but reading the newspapers, keeping an eye on the world, speaking with Clemenceau.
Monet would have been Charlie.
Here is a close-up of the desk that can be seen in Claude Monet’s bedroom at Giverny. It is from the mid 18th Century and features music instruments, not painting material. It was already an antique when Monet purchased it.
During the second half of his life Monet became famous. Recognised as a great painter, he sold his paintings at high prices. This enabled him to live a comfortable life.
The desk was restored last winter and found its original colors again.
Claude Monet is buried at Giverny. His grave is located behind the church. It’s a 10 minute walk from his house.
It is a big family tomb planted with flowers, what sounds only natural for such a great gardener. Monet rests together with his second wife Alice, his two sons Jean and Michel and their wives. Susan, a daughter of Alice, and Alice’s first husband Ernest Hoschedé also keep Monet company. It is rather ironical that Monet and his rival rest in the same grave.
The reason is that Ernest was the first one to die, and his children -raised by Monet- wanted him to rest in Giverny to be able to go on their father’s grave easily. The next one to pass away was Susan. Logically, she was buried with her father. Alice never recovered from this latter grief. When she succumbed to leucemia, she joined her beloved daughter in her last residence. Next came Jean, Monet’s son, and Claude Monet himself. He died the 5th of December 1926 from lung cancer.
Fall atmosphere in Monet’s gardens at Giverny.
The picture was taken from the steps of the dock next to the water lily pond.
On the left, the green leaves of pontederias.
The red shrub on the opposite bank is a Japanese maple.
In the distance appears the pink house with green shutters, Monet’s home for 43 years.
On the right, through the branches, the third studio where Monet painted his biggest water lilies panels.
Do you want to have a look at the Monet Garden while it is closed for the winter?
Here is the Japanese bridge as it was this morning.
Giverny is now closed for five months.
The village will awake again next spring.
The first day for visiting the gardens will be Saturday 28 March, 2015.
Claude Monet designed his water garden from scratch, turning a marshland into a beautiful waterscape to paint.
His eye as a painter can be noticed in the much thought of composition of the garden.
Every where perspectives draw the sight, offering a ready made composition to the artist.
Late May or early June, Monet’s garden turns mostly purple. On the pond banks, mauve ladies’ rocket matching exactly the big rhododendrum on the other side of the path combines with mauve or blue lupines, pink sweet Williams, white fox gloves and blue sages. The mauve turns progressively into pink to fit with the beautiful tree of roses. This scene doesn’t last long, but it is of great effect. It follows the bulbs period and will be followed by summer flowers. (click for more details)
Not a wild, ordinary one: it has beautiful golden rimmed leaves. Nonetheless, the holly disappears in the magnificence of flowers during the season, when the garden is in full bloom. Nobody takes any notice of the flowerless tree.
During the winter, on the contrary, when all the flowers are dead or waiting for better times to come, the holly recovers its majesty. This is probably why its prickly leaves and red berries are very much related to the time of Christmas and New Year.
In this season, spectacular flowers like irises, paeonies, wallflowers and roses bloom all at the same time.
The small walks of the garden disappear, leaving the illusion of a divine meadow adornated by the most exquisite flowers.
Not to speak about the delicate scent floating in the air…
Monet, who was an early bird, loved to get up before sunrise, in order not to miss a second of the dramatic show of light and water.
This place especially, where the long branches of three big weeping willows reach the surface of the pond, offering views on to the blooming water lilies, looks familiar.
Claude Monet loved this spot that he painted over and over again, and that is even featured on the huge Grandes Decorations at l’Orangerie.
The vertical lines mixed with the floating water lilies and the reflections on the surface of the pond challenged his command of perspective.
A small coating of snow hides the surface like a new canvas.
Long blue shadows stretch on the shining whiteness.
Not a single flower.
Even the brave pansies are covered with a blanket of snow.
No colors, except for the green bridges.
Birds are hiding, but their prints are everywhere, like strange words written in the snow.
And the running water of the river reminds that life is awaiting under the appearant death of nature.