Giverny, France: Monet’s Gardens & Water Lilies
I love going to France!
Each time I visit; however, I feel that there is an association with art everywhere I stop. Local guides and guide books are quick to point out any artist who has stayed, visited, or even just looked in the general direction of where I am. You could also say the same for art. It is incredible how many art pieces, either through the artist or the art itself, connect to France.
This connection between France and art explains why there are so many galleries in France, particularly in Paris. One of my favourites is the Musée de l’Orangerie, located in the Tuilleries Gardens. I used to do city tours of Paris as a guide and fell in love with the place. An incredible building built in the mid 19th century and home to arguably the finest collection of impressionist and post-impressionist paintings in the world. When you visit, you have the chance to see works by Cézanne, Matisse, Renoir & Picasso, just to name a few. The highlight, however, is eight paintings by the French artist Claude Monet titled the Water Lilies.
Monet painted his Water Lilies series from his home in Giverny, located north-west of Paris.
Giverny, France: The closed Norman Garden or "clos normand" at Foundation Claude Monet 
Giverny, France: Water lilies in the water pond at the Foundation Claude Monet 
Giverny, France: The water pond, Japanese bridge and plants at the Foundation Claude Monet 
Giverny, France: Claude Monet in his garden at the Foundation Claude Monet 
Giverny, France: The water pond with water lilies at the Foundation Claude Monet 
Giverny France: Some flowers in the Clos Normand (Closed Norman Garden) at the Foundation Claude Monet 
Giverny, France. The water pond with water lilies and Japanese bridge at Foundation Claude Monet 
Giverny, France: One of the flowers in the Clos Normand at Foundation Claude Monet 
Giverny, France:Giverny, The flowers and house at Foundation Claude Monet 
Giverny, France: The Clos Normand in the gardens of the Foundation Claude Monet 
Giverny, France: The water pond at Foundation Claude Monet
Claude Monet & the Impressionist painters
Monet was born in Paris in the middle of the 19th century and would become one of the impressionist movement’s founding members. Impressionists, and later post-impressionists, created works that, amongst other things, placed great emphasis on the use of light and the way it changed the qualities of the subject. In short, an artist paints the colours he sees, even though the light may have altered them significantly from the colours they originally were. As a result, most impressionist paintings are scenes painted outdoors or “en Plein air”.
It is from one of Monet’s paintings, “Impression, soleil levant (Impression, Sunrise), that the art critic, Louis Leroy, created the term Impressionist and Impressionism
Monet’s love affair with light and how it changed the French countryside led him to the small town of Giverny, located about 80 km (50 mi) outside Paris. Monet would use this picturesque village to create a series of more than 250 paintings collectively titled: Nymphéas or Water Lilies.
Monet's Arrival in Giverny
In 1883, Claude Monet passed through Giverny, a village with only 300 people, on a train. Whilst looking out the window he was very impressed with what he saw so he decided to return. Once there, Monet rented a small cottage and its gardens before raising enough money to buy them both outright in 1890. When he arrived, the land was nothing out of the ordinary, a downward sloping block surrounded by stone walls and covered with an orchard. Over the following years, Monet would mould and sculpture the gardens combining many natural features such as rivers, streams and ponds to some artificial ones such as his famous Japanese Bridge. There are two parts to Monet’s garden: a flower garden in the front of the house called Clos Normand and a Japanese style water garden.
Clos Normand
Monet designed the first part of his garden in a style that would be later called Clos Normand or the Closed Norman Garden. It consists of rectangular plots covered by archways full of climbing plants that intertwine with numerous coloured scrubs, including wisterias and azaleas, located at the front of the house. Monet mixed the simplest of flowers, such as daisies and poppies, with some of the rarest varieties of plants often bought at considerable cost.
“All my money goes into my garden, and I am in raptures” – Claude Monet
He did not traditionally organise his gardens, nor did he build boundaries confining his creations; instead, he married flowers according to their colours and let them grow relatively freely. Monet would ultimately make a garden full of perspectives, symmetries and colours.
The Water Garden
In 1893, ten years after he arrived in Giverny, Monet bought the neighbouring piece of land. A small stream crossed it, the Ru, that would be Monet’s water source to create his wonderful pond. Although his neighbours opposed it as they feared it would poison the water, the pond would eventually be covered with beautiful water lilies and crossed by a Japanese bridge, which would become a central feature of many of his paintings. Monet avidly collected Japanese wood prints, and the gardens pictured on them inspired him. These wood prints are today on display in the museum located in the main house.
Until he died in 1926, Monet would paint hundreds of scenes of, and from, his most beloved garden
Giverny Group
Monet began to attract other artists of the Impressionist movement with the towns’ natural beauty and atmosphere, including Willard Metcalf, Louis Ritter and Theodore Earl Butler. Butler would later marry Monet’s step-daughter and sometime model, Suzanne Hoschedé, there in 1892. The turn of the century saw other artists such as Fredrick Carl Frieseke, Richard Miller, and Guy Rose, who would later be known as the “Giverny Group”, and their style referred to as “Decorative Impressionism”.
First World War 1 and then the artists’ death would see the colony’s end with the house and gardens left to his son Michel. After World War II, the house and garden became neglected, so Michel handed them over to the Académie des Beaux-Arts in in 1966.
Monet's house and gardens today
In 1980, after an extensive restoration that included replanting the garden, Monet’s house & gardens opened to the public as a museum under the Claude Monet Foundation‘s control. Each year more than 500,000 people travel to Giverny to visit Monet’s house and gardens.
For anyone visiting, don’t forget to take a stroll through the town to see its many charming houses that are as beautiful as Monet’s. Giverny also remains a refuge for many modern-day impressionists such as Claude Cambour, Florence Ramier and Christophe Damarez, all of whom have galleries in the town. There is also a Museum of Impressionism located in the village too.
Never before has a painter so shaped his natural subjects before painting them.
A visit to Giverny is the ideal day trip for anyone visiting Paris. With water lily covered ponds, weeping willow trees, and wonderfully painted bridges, creating the perfect excursion to escape the hustle and bustle of Paris. All this beauty inspired Claude Monet to produce a series of paintings that are not only admired today but help create an entire genre of art.