My most beautiful work of art is my garden in Giverny.
Claude Monet
Claude Oscar Monet (1840-1926) is one of the most important and, according to many, the most consistent representative of French Impressionism. Moreover, the entire movement was named after Monet’s painting Impression, Sunrise (Impression, solei levant). He was also called a painter of light because he often painted the same subject at different times of day and year, trying to show how the colors of objects and landscapes change with the intensity and colors of light.
During the 19th century, painters usually only made sketches in nature, and they would finish the painting in their studio. Monet was among the first painters to start and finish a painting outdoors. He was known for carrying his painting easel and colors everywhere he went, and he even had a boat that he converted into a floating studio so he could paint on the water.
Monet combined his love for nature and art by designing gardens. Although he spent a lot of time in Paris, he found inspiration in his garden in Giverny. I traveled all over France and beyond, but I always preferred staying in the countryside, but always near the Seine.
Giverny is a small town on the banks of the Seine, about sixty kilometers northwest of Paris. Monet first saw it through the train window and fell in love with this village with its low cottages, deciding that it would be his new home. Upon arriving in Giverny, he rented a country house with an orchard and a large neglected plot of land. With a lot of energy and enthusiasm, he immediately started to arrange the garden. After managing to sell a few paintings, in 1890 he bought the rented house and the accompanying estate, and through subsequent purchases over the years, the estate continuously expanded.
The flower garden was initially an orchard with only a few flower beds. Monet spent years transforming it into a flower garden, carefully planning how the garden could be beautiful in every season. He planted thousands of annual and perennial plants, bulbous plants, and climbers, so the garden was full of flowers From early spring to late autumn, Monet meticulously arranged flowers by height and color, envisioning them as future subjects of his paintings. He placed vibrant and dark-colored flowers in the foreground, and soft and delicate ones in the background.
Monet’s garden consisted of two parts: the flower garden (Le Clos-Normand) located next to the house, and the water garden (Le Jardin d’Eau), which was added later on a plot of land separated from the rest of the property by a road.
The main feature of the flower garden was the central path, Grande Allee, which ran through the middle of the garden, leading from the entrance to the house. On either side of the central path, there were narrow, well-kept flower beds lined with gravel pathways, as well as small meadows shaded by trees. Above the central path, there was a pergola covered in climbing plants that twisted around metal arches, reaching their flowers towards the sky. This design created a distinct contrast to the strict and orderly concept The lush flower beds made the garden vibrant. Monet liked them to be dense and rich, with the flowers appearing natural. Less than ten years after arriving in Giverny in 1892, Monet bought a large plot of land separated from his house and flower garden by a road. There, he started and accomplished his most ambitious project – building a water garden inspired by distant Japan. As a painter, Monet was fascinated by water and the way it constantly changed its surface reflections. He always tried to capture the brief, momentary effects of light and atmosphere on his canvases. He asked the gardeners to keep the pond and its surface perfectly clean so that clouds, sky, trees, and bushes would reflect crystal-clear in the water. The water garden became the centerpiece of Monet’s art in the last 25 years of his career, even when he started losing his sight. He painted tirelessly, repeatedly depicting the same motif and scene. He painted over 250 paintings of the pond with water lilies. Some of them were of very large format, and today he is famous precisely because of them. After Monet’s death in 1926, his son Michel inherited the house with gardens and left them as a legacy to the French Academy of Fine Arts (Academie des Beaux-Arts). After a lengthy and thorough renovation, the house was transformed into a museum and opened to the public with its garden. The garden has been completely restored to its original appearance and is now considered one of the most beautiful gardens in the world.