Giverny, Monet, Challenge Completed!

 Monet moved to the small town of Giverny in 1883. Here, he began work on two passions that would define his life and legacy: his gorgeous garden and his series paintings. It might seem strange that four decades of Monet’s long career have been reduced to a single postcard. But fear not: much of the story of this period of Monet’s work will be taken up in the Monet Series content, which you’ll have started to unlock as you finish up this challenge.

In the late 1880s, artistic differences between the Impressionists caused a split within the movement. On one hand, there was the more radical camp, artists like Pissarro and Cézanne, who were fascinated by the techniques of the new generation of artists, especially the work of Georges Seurat and Paul Signac. They began applying new scientific advances in colour theory and optics to their work. These artists pioneered the Pointillist technique (meaning ‘dots’ in French), which used tiny dabs of colour to create patterns, believed to more accurately mimic how the eye observes colour (you can see an example by Signac above). Others in the group, especially Renoir, were less convinced, and drifted away, finding inspiration in the old Italian masters.

Monet attempted to chart a middle course, advocating for the continued relevance of Impressionism. He took inspiration from the Japanese woodblock-print masters, such as Hiroshige and Hokusai (of whom his large collection is available to view inside his house), and began to paint series. This commitment to creating series, painting the same subject many times from multiple angles and during different times of day, in different weather conditions, and at different times of the year would come to define Monet’s art in the latter half of his career. Through them, he sought to show how the character of an object changed radically depending on its conditions, how the world transforms around us depending on the weather and light.

In his old age, Monet began to suffer from cataracts. His vision faded, and the colours in his work began to blend and merge into each other, creating that dreamy, vapourous effect for which so many of his later paintings are famous. In these pictures, Monet looked at how the atmosphere cloaks solid objects in a scene. Like this, he showed how the effects of light make solid objects seem to merge with the background, creating a feeling that you’re not looking at separate objects, but at a single atmosphere of shifting light and colour. The artist called this quality enveloppe, and you can see this effect clearly in the painting above (or if you take a nice walk at dawn or dusk).

Monet’s life was dedicated to painting, but his other great passion was gardening. The garden Monet created around his house in Giverny is among his greatest works of art. He took inspiration from both the French tradition of formal gardens and the Japanese practice of Zen gardening. These influences split the garden into two parts, the Clos Normand, a French-style flower garden, and the water garden, which is in Japanese style and contains his famous lily ponds. Both parts of the garden functioned as a sort of living studio, even featuring greenhouses to allow him to paint the garden in any season. 

As the sun starts to set, a gardener warns me the house will close in half an hour. I sit on a bench overlooking the lily ponds and take a moment to reflect on my journey following Monet along the Seine. As I stare into the waters and watch the light filter through the lilies and play in the ripples, I think back on Monet’s life and legacy. I wonder about the many artists he’s inspired, but most of all I think about how he taught us to look differently, to let go of our preconceptions, and to truly appreciate the great feast of colours our natural world provides.