Painting the Modern Garden: Monet to Matisse

“I perhaps owe it to flowers that I have become a painter.”—Claude Monet

While depictions of gardens are found throughout history, the impressionists were among the first to portray gardens directly from life, focusing on their color and form rather than using them as a background. This volume explores the close, symbiotic relationship between artists and gardens that developed during the latter part of the 19th and first part of the 20th centuries, centering on Monet, a great horticulturalist as well as a great artist who cultivated gardens wherever he lived, and the creation of his masterpiece garden at Giverny, where he painted his renowned water-lilies series.

Beautifully illustrated with masterpieces by Monet and later painters—Renoir, Bonnard, Sargent, Klee, Kandinsky, and Matisse, among others—Painting the Modern Garden traces the evolution of the garden theme from impressionist visions of light and atmosphere to retreats for reverie, sites for bold experimentation, sanctuaries, and, ultimately, signifiers of a world restored to order—a paradise regained.