The Gardens
It was truly an exciting moment for me to walk the same
paths and see the same vistas that Claude Monet nurtured and painted for 43
years of his life. I was
walking where he had walked. I was standing in the same places where he had stood and painted. I was looking out onto the same gardens that he
had found so inspiring. I was
seeing things in the same light that he spent a lifetime capturing. You can
study all the books you care to and stand in front of as many of his paintings
as you can get to, but as a painter there is a powerful energy that surrounds
you when you are standing in Monet’s Garden.
I saw the endless number of paintings waiting to be painted there.
I understood how he never tired of painting the same views over and over.
Nature never repeats itself, not in a leaf, a flower or the arch of a tree
branch. It may be similar but it’s never exactly the same. The light is always
changing, as are the seasons. Anyone that’s ever painted outside, en plein aire,
knows this.
My trip to Giverny was followed the next day by a visit to Musée de
l'Orangerie, an art gallery of impressionist and post-impressionist paintings located in the west corner of the Tuileries Gardens in Paris.
Over the last 30 years of his life Monet worked on a large series of waterlily
paintings he titled, Nymphéas. They are housed in museums all
over the world including, Water Lilies, 1903, at the Dayton Art Institute in Dayton, Ohio.
In 1922 Monet donated eight of these panels to the French government
as a monument to the end of World War I. Visiting them seemed like the perfect finishing touch after my visit to his gardens.
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| This photo is from Wikipedia as you are not allowed to take photos in these rooms. |
Two adjoining, elliptical rooms, each with four large canvas
panels mounted to the walls allow you to be surrounded by these quiet, peaceful paintings. I saw the source of his inspiration one
day and was now looking at his finished paintings.
First from afar, standing in the middle of the room, my gaze
scanning each wall. Then up close, two entirely different perspectives.
In the center of the room you see water, waterlilies and
weeping willow fronds. There is no visible sky or banks of the pond to give you
perspective. That’s in part why
this new style of painting was so shocking in its time.
Looking at the paintings closely you see a million different
mixtures of color layered one on top of the next and feel the energy with which they were created. Memories of mine that will be with me the rest of my life.
