Water Lilies. 1904. 35” x 36”
Musée des Beaux-Arts Andre Malraux, Le Havre.
Monet–Artist and Gardner
By Denise Laurin, Artist and Art Historian
“My garden is my most beautiful masterpiece.” ~ Claude Monet
As we open the small unassuming door on the Rue Claude Monet in Giverny, we are met by a dazzling display of color. Despite the wealth of astonishing paintings, he left as his legacy, Monet declared, “My garden is my most beautiful masterpiece.” The Clos Normand (Monet’s name for his house garden) is a paradise curated by an artist whose intention was to paint it.
Maison Rose
Monet’s home became known as Maison Rose, or the “Pink House” for the brick dust used to color its stucco façade. He rented the house in 1883 and spent a total of forty-three years in the Pink House. Monet struggled to earn a living until his mid-forties, when American collectors began to buy his art. As his fame and success grew, he was able to purchase Maison Rose in 1890, becoming a homeowner at fifty. He went from being nearly penniless to being one of the greatest and best compensated painters in the world.
Clos Normand
The Clos Normand became Monet’s passion. Monet’s garden came about through continuous improvement. He redesigned, adjusted and developed his garden, to capture the dazzling colorscapes in every season we know today in his art. Together with the Jardin d’eau (water garden), there are hundreds of thousands of annuals, biennials and perennials.
As an example of the depth of his thinking, he planted blue flowers in and around trees to emphasize the coolness of their shadows. Fiery orange, gold and bronze flowers were planted on the western side to accentuate the colors of the setting sun. Monet also used color to play with distance and perspective, too. For example, he planted pastel colors behind more intense colors of the same hue to give a sense of atmospheric perspective.
Jard d’eau
Three years after purchasing the house and Clos Normand, Monet annexed the property on the other side of the railway line and began the arduous task of transforming the marshy ground into his Jardin d’eau (water garden). His intention was to build something "for the pleasure of the eye and motifs to paint."
Inspired by Japanese prints which decorate the interior of the Pink House, he designed the Jardin d’eau with a Japanese aesthetic. Over the narrow end of the pond, he built a Japanese bridge and filled the pond with exotic waterlily hybrids first introduced at the Paris World’s Fair in 1889. Monet was so proud of his water garden that he liked to receive his guests there and spent hours contemplating it.
An Obsession
From 1890 the water lily pond became Monet’s principal subject for the rest of his life until his death in 1926. In particular, he was fascinated by the reflections of clouds on water. As an Impressionist he was of course, most interested in the effects of light at different times of day and in different atmospheric conditions. A major misconception is that Monet worked completely en plein air. While he began them outdoors, he labored over his paintings in the studio, sometimes taking many months, or even years to complete them.
In all, he left behind over 400 paintings of the Clos Normand and the Jardin d’eau, forty of which were large scale. Known collectively as the Grande Décorations, these works represent one of art history’s greatest last acts.
____________________________________________________________________________________Denise Laurin is a fine artist and art historian who holds an M.A. in art history. Through her art practice, Denise Laurin Visual Art, she focuses on the universal idea of moving from darkness into light expressed through the human form and explores the duality between the physical body and the spiritual soul. She accepts portrait commissions and provides engaging presentations to organizations on a wide variety of art-related topics. www.deniselaurinvisualart.com
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