Before we profile this wonderful New York Garden of Monet, we have a…
NEWS FLASH
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NOW, ON TO NY GARDEN OF MONET
If you’ve ever been to Giverny, you probably did what every tourist does and had your picture taken standing on the bridge over the pond. Now you can just go to the New York Botanical Garden where they have mounted an exhibit that includes not only the garden but photographs, videos, rare documents, Monet’s wooden palette, and two of the impressionist’s paintings as well. One of the paintings, Irises, is darker in color and tone, perhaps because it was painted during World War I.
The Artist’s Garden in Giverny, on loan from the Yale University Art Gallery, was painted around the year 1900 and shows his flower garden with a dense arrangement of irises and decorative trees.
You enter the exhibit by stepping through an historically accurate replica by Tony Award-winning set designer Scott Park, of Monet’s house with its recognizable salmon walls and green shutters, and out into a corridor of flowers.
The more than 150 species will change as the exhibit runs through three seasons, from May 19 to Oct. 21. The goal, says Todd Forrest, head of horticulture, is to show “the incredible, overpowering color and the sort of spirit of natural beauty that infused and informed his paintings. And we hope that visitors to the whole exhibition will leave understanding that Monet would never have been the painter he became if he wasn’t the gardener he was.”
Monet, who lived in the house 43 years, was constantly changing and combining plants for new results and had a section he referred to as “paint box beds”. Of course, water lilies are an important part of the exhibit and include more than 50 varieties. He first saw hybrid water lilies at the 1899 Paris World’s Fair and became so fascinated with them that he would paint them over and over.
Paul Hayes Tucker, the exhibition’s curator, says he thinks Monet would be pleased with the recreation, but also a little jealous. He says the gardens “defined Monet. They gave him life. They added kind of spiritual zest to his being and they obviously were absolutely central to his conceptions about art. He could stand at his doorstep, as you can see in this recreation, and look down the allee to the Japanese bridge in the distance.”
These photo were taken on a visit to Giverny in 1982 and show the view from the house down the Grand Allee toward the pond beyond the gate in the distance, looking back at the house from the garden, and the pond with the Japanese bridge in the distance. (note: it pays to keep your photos accessible for any later use, even 30 years later!)
Tucker continues, “The gardens and the paintings were so inextricably wound in Monet’s life and his work and his mind, the gardens themselves become like a living work of art — like a still life.” To learn more about Monet and his life at Giverny, visit NPR’s web site, The State’s article, “NYC exhibition evokes Claude Monet’s flower garden”, and Frank Organ’s ideabook Lessons From Monet’s Garden at Houzz.
– Lorre Lei
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