Claude Monet sprouts up naturally in conversations about the world's renowned nature painters. Throughout his lifetime, he painted countless men and women, and landscapes of cities and towns, but it's the beautiful poppies, water lilies, and tulips that are ultimately recognized as his best works. Unlike Van Gogh's still lifes or Georgia O'Keefe's metaphorical flower paintings, Monet's paintings offer a deeper, profound sense of natural beauty and peace.
A bit of background
Monet, born in November of 1840 was another French painter, alongside Renoir, Cezanne and Sisley. In the 1860s, he branched out from his French friends, beginning to paint his scenes in a new style. This loose recreation of relaxed detail in his paintings would come to be known as impressionism, after one of his works, Impressionism: Sunrise. He even formed a group of Impressionists that explored and exhibited the style, but fizzled out by the 1880s. Despite this, Monet persevered, focusing his style further and developing motifs of nature. This is the Monet that most of us know.
The Desolate Now
By now, the leaves have separated from the trees, most rotting away and decomposing on a forest floor somewhere, or piled under a car wheel in the street from a recent rainy downpour. The bare trees look like sickly shipwrecks; not far off from what many high schoolers probably feel like, with the 30° temperatures and dark 6 AM wakeups. Like surly high schoolers in America, Monet was often faced with strife, mental hardships, and relationship struggles. Nevertheless, he took to nature and art as a healing and soothing source of joy. In fact, Monet was quite the gardener.
Monet's Aquatic Gardening
Despite the relaxed painting style and perceived spontaneity of Monet's painting series, the perfectly natural ponds and gardens were completely intentional. Before painting a majority of his famous scenes, Monet planted water lilies and many other plants at his property in
Giverny. He hired dozens of gardeners, diverting a river to plant water lilies, exotic flowers and other aquatic vegetation. He planted weeping willows and bamboo trees, seeding the pond and adding chickens, ducks and pheasants.
Monet found beauty in the nature around him, curating his environment as though it were just another one of his large paintings. You can visit his garden in France today, or even easier, you can visit online. Though a bit glitchy and solely in French, this virtual tour can spring you out of the desolate January shivers into a summery French getaway home with a backyard filled with gorgeously blooming flowers.
Sources to read more!
Written by Kate Morton
Edited by Kate Morton