The fine arts museum ‘Musée des Impressionnismes Giverny’ has a new exhibition that will last through January 2024. It is dedicated to flowers in art and encompasses so many styles, times, forms of art, subjects and purposes that everybody will find something to feel moved, impressed and amazed. No Monets, though he painted many flowers, but canvases by his friends Bazille, Boudin, Cézanne, an extraordiany Fantin-Latour… Up to present day flowered dresses and Warhol series of flowers… Let it bloom!
Monet’s gardens at Giverny, 2023, 1st April / Photo Ariane Cauderlier
Visitors are back in Monet’s gardens in Giverny, enjoying the first flowers of the season: daffodils, tulips, pansies, hyacinths, fritillaries… Trees blossom in pink and white. The first water lily pads are appearing on the pool.
Exhibition ‘The Children of Impressionism’ in Giverny, spring 2023
In the nearby Musee des Impressionnismes Giverny (MDIG) the current exhibition is called ‘The Children of Impressionism’. It is packed with works by Renoir, Monet, Morisot, Pissarro, Boudin… full of fatherly or motherly tenderness. The exhibition will last up to July 2, 2023. Enjoy!
The 2021 exhibition at Musee des Impressionnismes Giverny displays paintings and photographs of gardens, from Monet to Bonnard. Impressionists and Nabis steal the show with gorgeous works full of colors, like this master piece by Monet featuring the garden of his aunt Lecadre.
Although the water garden designed by Claude Monet still looks very peaceful, everybody is working hard at Giverny. The Fondation Monet (his home and gardens) as well as the Musee des Impressionnismes Giverny reopen in ten days, on Friday, 25th March. It is earlier than normally, because Easter is especially early this year.
Just out of the Winter, the gardens are not overloaded with flowers, yet pleasant to walk around. They look fresh and shiny. The first signs of Spring can be noticed. Jonquils are already out, illuminating special spots with their bright yellow. I took the picture above this afternoon.
The Musée des Impressionnismes will display an exhibition of works by Gustave Caillebotte. This hugely talented impressionist was a keen horticulturist. His garden and rare flowers were among his favorite motifs.
A beautiful exhibition has just started at the Museum of Impressionisms Giverny. Through 80 works signed Edgar Degas, (oil on canvas, pastel, brass, etc) it questions the painter’s membership in the group of the impressionists. His daring compositions, his motifs taking in the present day life, his free brushwork, last but not least his involvement in the organization of the impressionist exhibitions of the times make him an impressionist.
But Degas rejected open air painting, had a classical training, and hated the word impressionist itself. So was he, or not, an impressionist painter? Make your own opinion exploring this outstanding exhibition that displays many famous masterpieces, as well as less known works uncluding rarely seen Degas landscapes.
The French museum dedicated to the different branches of impressionism, Musee des Impressionnismes Giverny, is housed in a building that was once the Museum of American Art Giverny.
This year, american impressionist paintings will be back in the galleries of the MDIG thanks to a new exhibit entitled “American Impressionism: A New Vision”.
From 28 March till 29 June 2014, 80 works by Cassatt, Robinson, Chase, Whistler, Sargent, Hassam or Tarbell will show how American painters adopted and adapted the new impressionist style by the end of the 19th century.
In a single word: it’s beautiful. I’m sure you will enjoy it.
Here is the stunning ‘black’ garden of the Musee des Impressionnismes Giverny (Museum of Impressionisms).
The garden was created twenty years ago, this is why it indulges in this modern fashion for so called black flowers. Aren’t they amazing with their dark foliage or petals?
Of course black doesn’t exist for flowers, it’s always very dark red or purple, anyway unexpected hues for flowers.
Planting them together like here, and not just as accents, produces a very special effect, surprising and maybe a little bit disturbing, doesn’t it? I like the black garden, but I love the white one next to it!
The American impressionists will be back in 2014 in the gallery of the MDIG, that used to be the Museum of American Art Giverny, founded by Daniel Terra. The first exhibit will open on March 28, 2014 and is entitled “Impressionism and the Americans”. Featuring works by Cassatt, Whistler and Sargent, among many others, it will last until June 29, 2014. And for sure the impressionist painters used all the colors of the palette, not only black and white.
This exhibition will be followed by a second one focusing on Belgian artists, “Brussels, an Impressionist Capital” from July 11, 2014 to November 2, 2014.
“Signac, the Colors of Water” is the title of the next exhibition at the Musee des Impressionnismes Giverny.
It will open on March 29, 2013 and display 120 works by the famous post-impressionist painter Paul Signac.
Signac is well-known for his pointillist, sometimes almost mosaic like paintings. He also loved watercolors for a quick sketch of a place, especially harbors.
Signac was a great admirer of Claude Monet. He stayed for the summer at Les Andelys, not far from Giverny, where Monet visited him and bought him a watercolor.
The Giverny exhibit includes a sumptuous view of the River Seine at Les Andelys belonging to Musée d’Orsay.
A few steps away from his home at Giverny, Claude Monet had a chicken yard full of hens, and Fondation Claude Monet still keeps a few chickens in this corner of the garden.
Just like Monet, they don’t choose every year the same breed. In 2010, visitors enjoyed looking at the funny Padua chickens, absolutely stylish with their fluffy feathers on the head.
Monet loved to have fresh eggs at hand, and the family must have eaten many every day, according to the storage available: in the pantry of Monet’s house, two boxes could contain 116 eggs!
But hens were not a sign of wealth for a family belonging to the middle upper class, this is why they were hidden in a corner of the garden under a big fig tree. However, their presence was revealed by crowing of the roaster.
Turkeys, on the contrary, were considered decorative fowl and were proudly shown in the turkey yard next to the kitchen.
Nowadays, the turkey yard displays turkeys and chickens together. The roasters of both yards like to have sort of a dialog, exchanging their cock-a-doodle-do. The big roaster in the turkey yard has a deep voice, the Padua roaster in the chicken yard a high pitched one, and when they talk together, they are absolutely irresistible.
I kindly dedicate this post to Cynthia Brian, the “Chicken Lady”, co-author of “Chicken Soup for the Gardener Soul”.
American visitors to Giverny often ask to which agricultural zone Giverny belongs. A puzzling question indeed, as these zones aren’t commonly used in France!
Asking about the coldest temperature in Winter doesn’t help a lot, because the Frenchs count in Celsius, not in Farenheit.
I finally found the answer: Giverny is in zone 8.
During the coldest night of the last Winter, temperatures reached -13°C, that is to say 8°F. This is OK for many plants, trees and bushes, except the most fragile.
Some flowers even need frost to understand that it is Winter, and then Spring. If tulips, for instance, don’t get all the cold they need, they will sulk and refuse to bloom the next Spring!
It sounds like the perfect transition for the new Museum of Impressionisms Giverny: after the first exhibition dedicated to Monet’s Nymphéas, that ended with resolutely modern late works, the next artist occupying the galleries of the museum is Joan Mitchell.
Although Mitchell rarely admitted Monet’s influence on her canvases, undoubtedly she put her feet in his footsteps. She lived in the same riverscape, the Seine Valley at Vétheuil. In this village where Monet had spent a couple of very hard years, painting relentlessly, she bought the house neighboring his, almost a century later, and just like Monet she admired the beautiful natural setting.
But instead of trying to recreate nature on the canvas, Mitchell, an abstract expressionist, preferred to concentrate on her own feelings. She shared with Monet an amazing energy, a fantastic talent as a colorist, a special love for oversized canvases, and more.
The exhibition is on display only a few miles away from Vetheuil until 31 October, 2009 at the Musée des Impressionnismes Giverny.
Joan Mitchell, Great Valley number IX, oil on canvas
Over 100 000 visitors will have seen the beautiful exhibition of 28 paintings by Monet at the Musee des Impressionnismes Giverny.
The exhibition started on May 1st ends on Saturday 15 August.
It will have met all the expectations by attracting crowds of Monet lovers in the village where the canvases, mostly featuring Nympheas, had been created.
The next exhibition opening on 23 August is dedicated to the oversized and colorful paintings of American artist Joan Mitchell. Joan Mitchell, a master of expressionism, was inspired by Monet’s Nympheas. She lived for years in Vetheuil, her studio neighboring Monet’s house on the river side.
For the museum, it will be sort of a flash-back to its origins. Before becoming the Musee des Impressionnismes Giverny, it used to be the Musee d’Art Americain Giverny.
Small chambers of monochromatic beds are hidden behind tall hedges. Each one has a different atmosphere, creating a surprising effect for visitors who stroll along the central alley.
Tulips are a must in spring, of course. But they need to be planted together with smaller flowers at their feet for a greater impact.
Several varieties are suitable to cover the bare ground. Pansies exist in so many colors that it is possible to create infinite harmonies.
Daisies are also a simple solution. Their pink gives a fresh look to the flower bed.
But if you are as lazy as I am, you will certainly prefer forget-me-nots. They reseed on their own and offer a very tender and poetic cloud of tiny flowers for weeks.
They are generally blue, but can also be found in pink or white. In Monet’s garden they are widely used: blue forget-me-nots with pink tulips, white ones with white tulips or pink with pink tulips for a ton sur ton harmony.
Here in the Museum’s garden they are planted in a wave towered by a bunch of tulips: this way they give rhythm to the border.
I am absolutely excited by the news I’ve just read in the local newspaper of Vernon: next year, the Fine Arts museum of Giverny (temporarily named Impressionist Museum, but its name may change) will start its new life with an incredible exhibition. The organisers plan to obtain 30 Monets! The theme will be, obviously enough, Monet’s gardens.
It seems too fantastic to be true, but I’m not dreaming. Imagine! The visitor will be able to see the paintings on the very place where they were created, to go from the canvases to the garden, from the garden to the canvases. A unique, unforgetable experience. It will be absolutely gorgeous. Visitors will leave Giverny their eyes full of beauty and harmony.
The new museum will open with this exceptional exhibition on May 1st, 2009, one month later than Monet’s home and gardens at Giverny, opening on April 1st, 2009. The paintings by the master of Impressionism will stay at Giverny through August 15th.
An exhibition of Joan Mitchell‘s paintings is scheduled from August 23rd through October 31st, 2009. The American artist Joan Mitchell has a direct connection with Monet: she bought and lived in the house neighbouring his former house at Vétheuil, 20 km from Giverny.
In the future the museum of Giverny will constitute its own permanent collection. It could be open year round. It’s hard to imagine better news, isn’t it?
