Monet's Garden at Giverny 

          Little did Eugène Boudoin know that when he first encouraged Monet to paint out of doors in 1858, it would lead to a revolution in the history of art for the entire world. Arguably the founder of Impressionism, Claude Monet took Boudoin's advice, slowly building the ideas and foundations for the Impressionist movement; he proceeded to paint the world around him in a completely new perspective, one of deep expression, unfiltered emotion, and immediate sensation. After a lifetime of travels, wars, and social experiences, Monet finally settled in Giverny, where he was able to reflect both emotionally and thematically on his work and come to terms with many of the issues that troubled him during the 1870's and 80's about industrialization, progress, and his relationship with nature and with society. His home in Giverny became his quiet retreat from the stresses of the external world, where the time passed easily and he could let his imagination have control over the whole domain. His last work before he began his concentration on the water lilies, Monet's Garden at Giverny, represents the evolution and culmination of both his physical and mental journey as a painter through the nineteenth century. Possessing elements from every era of his career, this painting marks an end to a chapter in Monet's life that was full of contrast, and it demonstrates where he has come from, all that he has seen, and what has lead him to this utopia in the French countryside.

            After close observation, the many layers to the composition of Monet's Garden at Giverny begin to unfold, the nuances revealing themselves through the simple organizational structure and unique style in which he painted the work. Initially, it seems as though the scene depicts a simple but pleasant summer day in a garden of blooming flower beds and luscious trees with two paths that run through the irises and back to the trees, defining the different planes of space. These two seemingly parallel paths dominate the canvas because of their strong definitions of color and texture; however, they appear to have two different functions in the painting. The first, more prominent path on the right side of the canvas leads to the trees in the middleground. The lines of these trails serve the dual purpose of directing the viewer around the composition and drawing the eye deeper into the literal and figurative meanings of the canvas. Monet peppered this work – and his garden – with compositional details that encourage active participation with the subject matter and instill an exciting quality to his work and the experience of regarding it. For example, disguised behind the trees in the background lies a house that does not immediately distinguish itself to the viewer because of its color and lack of detail. However, the farther path leads to the entrance of the house, thus calling attention to its existence. The slight traces of a building's outline begin to appear underneath the dense foliage, and it becomes clear that a rather substantial structure lurks behind the clearing of the trees. Also, because Monet based his perspective just off the trail of the first, more dominant path, the viewer is further enticed to take another route through the work in search of more hidden components. This track leads the eye off the canvas to a place out of sight, and thereby creates a sense of synecdoche; the direction of the path pulls away from the intimation of the house in the background, and instead begs the viewer to take the passage that leads into new territory, off into the world of the artist. This sense adds to the intrigue of the work, fostering a sense of mystery and enchantment; what else could he have in his paradise, retired from the outer world? The journey along the path also induces questions about the direction that the artist took with his art after completing this piece, as it seems to culminate many years of working in a particular technique.

            Revered for the intensity of his style, Monet understood and valued highly the immense power that color and paint application have in a painting, and he employed these stylistic elements in Garden at Giverny to further enhance the subject matter and composition. The texture of the brushstrokes and the vibrant hues found within the piece establish a sense of space and facilitate an entryway into the paint and scenery; the beautiful blue, green, and orange tones attract the eye to the pathways that lead the viewer through the canvas. The shapes and line, resulting from the strong, quick brushstrokes and layered colors of Monet's palette, do not have the effect of making the work appear unpolished and rough, but rather they seem to render a scene that is balanced, enhanced, and full of vivacity, creating a pleasing dichotomy between a sense of motion and spontaneity and a loose structure created by the lines on the canvas. The equilibrium and cohesion created by the horizontal and vertical lines of the paths and trees are joined by the unity found in the repetition of colors and textures throughout the work, and the composition and perspective provided in this painting generate a scene that exudes feelings of quiet content, solidarity, and accord.

              As Monet moved throughout France, discovering new issues to tackle, the evolution of his thematic content, ranging from nature to society to industrialization and progress, manifests itself clearly in his work. The paintings produced around the time when he first settled in Argenteuil in 1871 depict landscapes of the village, daily scenes, and the artist's home life. The paintings of his garden in Argenteuil, confined to the walls of the property, possess a wide range of visible elements of the surrounding suburban culture; for example, Monet's House and Garden at Argenteuil shows his son playing outside as his wife Camille stood in the doorway of their house. Evident through the juxtaposition of his home and garden, the work reflects the important balance between self and nature, as well as Monet's rising class status and the idea of urbanity as a conflicting part of his lifestyle. His garden provided him a haven from the stress and disquietude he found increasingly as the years passed living in Argenteuil; Monet's relationship with his wife Camille had begun to deteriorate, which caused Monet to detach himself from his family. Pushing him even further from the outer world into the private recesses of his mind, Monet also had to deal with his fear of the heightening power and presence of industry that was taking over Argenteuil. The paintings of bridges from the early 1870's as well as the series of train studies he finished in 1877 indicate his desire and need to control the oncoming forces of modernization. This need for control and the depression that resulted affected him so deeply that during his last two years in Argenteuil he completed a mere four paintings, not including those done in Paris. By the time he finally left the Parisian suburb in 1878, he was filled with discontent and a sense of disjunction towards the advent of a harsher century; the prominence of the house in House and Garden at Argenteuil may signify this disaccord. Moving about France to numerous places around the country to rid himself of his burdens, Monet finally settled in Giverny in 1883, where he would remain for fourty-three years, and by the time he was firmly established there at the close of the century, his mind had been freed of its torments, allowing his relationship with nature to be rejuvenated and his love for painting to return.

            Combining his passion for both art and the natural world, Monet's paintings of Giverny capture his newfound contentment with his life as well as the progression of his style. His broad treatment of his surroundings is one of the most provoking elements visible throughout all his artwork, and in Garden at Giverny, he continues to enthrall the viewer with the multifarious possibilities for interpretation of its deep meaning. The image of his garden, bursting with vegetation, provides a basic structure onto which he can impose the subtleties of his personal opinions. The fact that Monet chose to depict his garden is, in itself, significant, for it shows that despite his retirement from the pressures of society, he continued to be involved with the contemporary trends. Horticulture had recently replaced the hobby of boating for the elite, fashionable crowd, and the elaboration of one's garden served as a measure of one's affluence. Monet seized the opportunity to display both his profound love for nature and his accumulated prosperity. His garden, which he designed, planted, and cultivated, was for him his “greatest work of art”, an idealized impression of what nature should look like. If in the past he had constructed his perspective in his paintings to be aesthetically pleasing, with this garden he conceived a fictional reality in which man and nature were brought even closer together, a goal that he had strived to reach for years. The man who made the immense beauty of this natural scene come to life now lived in his utopian world full of harmony, peace, and contentment. Unlike the space of his earlier garden landscapes, which had been tainted by hints of the surrounding town, the space in Garden at Giverny is instead open, free-flowing and relaxed. In his garden, Monet could focus on his feelings and subjects, evaluating the events of the previous ten years without having to address the external pressures of society's progression and the ideas of industrialization, so prominent in his subject matter while living in Argenteuil. Thus, the representation of his garden denotes the contentment and peace of mind that he had been searching for. Similarly, the house in the background, barely distinguishable at first amongst the vibrant hues of the trees and flowers, symbolizes the happiness in his personal life that he found in his new home. Thirteen years after Camille's death in 1879, he remarried, and by the time of this painting in 1900, it appears from the seclusion and inattention to the house in the background that his personal issues have been resolved.

              In contrast to Monet's earlier works in which the perspective was more centrally located with the action in the background of the painting, in Garden at Giverny the perspective places the viewer just off the first path, inviting the viewer to travel the different avenues in the work. This shift of perspective perhaps indicates the artist's movement towards being more submerged in nature instead of society. The lines of the second path are less defined and less colorful than the first, and it does not provide the viewer with access to this thoroughfare. Presumably, the artist painted this path as unreachable and without highlights because it leads to the house in the background, which itself appears flat, barely detailed, and almost hidden by the surrounding vegetation. Monet seems to have put significantly less emphasis on his house in this painting, which suggests that his personal life no longer dominated his priorities and that he had found satisfaction with his new wife and lifestyle. The heavy brushstroke and color entice the viewer to look deeper for the underlying meanings to his seemingly informal methods of paint application, for Monet accentuated the shapes and objects that he wanted the viewer to see by applying strong lines and colors; conversely, he added fewer details to the elements of lesser importance, such as the house in the background. Furthermore, the thick imposto of individual brushstrokes serves as a way of portraying shapes and space, which gives the impression of movement, air, and atmosphere to the scene as well as a feeling of vivacity and harmony. The varying types of brushstrokes, such as the more contained, comma-like dashes in the flowers and the elongated, feathery, loosely dripping strokes of the trees, repeat themselves throughout the work and thus contribute to the cohesion and intrigue of the painting. The artist spent many years developing this method of using the power of brushstroke and texture to create a sense of synecdoche in his paintings, and clearly, the style of Garden at Giverny epitomizes his mastery of the process.

             Monet also employed color, the other essential ingredient to his style, to further affect the overall impression that the picture engenders, and in this work in particular, the boldness and vibrancy of the colors contribute some of the most striking aspects of the entire painting. The artist layered multifarious hues next to and on top of one another in the flowers, the pathways, the trees, and all through the background. He also repeated this layering of color in different objects and shapes in the canvas; for example, the red-orangey hues found in the trees return in the windows of the house and the pathways. The pure hues remain untarnished by local color, and instead complement one another, making the canvas seem to move as though there was a slight breeze passing through the garden. In order to maintain the purity and the light nurtured by the use of pure hues, the artist did not use the color black on his palette, and he applied a coat of white gesso underneath the canvas to create a heightened sense of luminosity, which clearly makes it seem as though the viewer was in the garden in broad daylight with Monet himself. The richness and clarity of color, light, and brushstroke almost imply a feeling of youthfulness and gaiety, as though Monet had been rejuvenated by his garden, and that sentiment has been transmitted through his memory sensation onto the canvas; all of the aspects of this painting's style represent the return of the carefree excitement and passion for capturing nature that the artist felt when he was living and working at Giverny.   Moreover, this free and unpolished way of using color, applying paint, and incorporating lines and shapes are all part of the style that Monet developed to perfection over the course of his whole career, and this painting represents the pinnacle of his excellence in producing a work that is honest to the original sensation of a setting.

              The analysis of Garden at Giverny makes it evident that in this work, Monet attempted to convey his final sentiment of the experiences he had had as both a painter and as an observer of life in the nineteenth century; the traces of his mental struggles with the concepts of public versus private life, society versus the individual, man versus nature, past versus present, and myth versus reality all appear in the thematic content of this painting, and profoundly enrich the work. The evolution of the artist's style, ranging from the early days of large-scale attempts at traditional methods, to the landscapes of a changing suburban town, to the appearance of large-scale industry and through the reconstruction of a nation to the comfort of a small country field, and the maturity of technique, methods, and interpretations that he had acquired are used in conjunction with one another to create this painting which is almost a manifestation of his soul. Monet, in a place of such exquisite beauty and aesthetic perfection, could not even attempt to refrain from expressing the incredible utopian world he had created, and clearly this painting reflects his passion and feelings for life, his close-knit relationship with nature, and the peaceful joy he has found after a life of conflicting ideas, emotional disjunction, and creative intensity. Monet's Garden at Giverny is, quite simply, the epitome of his thematic, stylistic, and technical content, and serves as a final glimpse into a mind and a life devoted to the world around him.

This paper recieved the Phi Beta Kappa Freshman Seminar Award for Outstanding Creative Work.