On a recent trip to Paris, we took a side trip to Giverny, Claude Monet’s home and gardens, and his sources of inspiration of many of his works that we know so well. I have always marveled at his impressionist technique, creating magical and moving images with abstract brush strokes and an extraordinary use of color. I wanted to see what he saw, to see what inspired this artistic beauty.
Our journey started with a train trip from Gare St. Lazare in Paris. We were in fact travelling on Monet’s routine path between Giverny and Paris, and this train station became one of his subjects. As we approached Monet’s house in Giverny, on Rue Claude Monet (I’m quite sure the street was not called that when he was living there!), we passed an expansive field of red poppies – my favorite! – and I immediately recalled his amazing painting of the poppy fields. The rich color, texture, and movement of the poppy petals in the breeze among the grasses – it all seemed so familiar. Monet captured not only the subject, but more so the feeling of the space – and it was an immediate connection for me.
My first “impression” upon entering the garden, and gazing over the menagerie of flowers, was that I was in an Impressionist painting! The many colors, shapes, textures of the many varieties of flowers, all intermixed, without regimented order, created a glorious blur and blend of color and light. If you look close, you see the focus of an individual flower, but looking across the field, a blur of color and light.
We saw this beauty in mid afternoon, in early June. I can only imagine how the experience changes at different times of day, at different times of year. And this was Monet’s passion – he was a master at studying and portraying color and light transformation of one place over many times and seasons.
The gardens were full of many, many colors of poppies, roses, allium, cosmos, and so many more. A very special part of Monet’s gardens is the famous lily pond, Les Nympheas – a stunning, lush pond of pink, white, and yellow lilies proudly sitting atop their pads, surrounded by flowers and trees.
A few days after our Giverny visit, we were excited to see some of Monet’s paintings in person. The Musee L’Orangerie was built to house Monet’s incredible paintings of the lilies (Les Nympheas) in two oval shaped rooms. The opportunity to walk around these rooms, alongside the paintings, just as we had walked around the pond, was breathtaking. We stood back and looked at the paintings from a distance, and the scene looked as we had experienced it; we looked at the paintings close up, and the lilies were just a few perfect brush strokes.
Click Here to Watch Video from Musée de l’Orangerie
Looking at these paintings, after just experiencing the places, brought out an important observation – in the real life in person experience, we look at the flowers up close and see extraordinary detail, and from a distance we see a blur and blend of color. In Monet’s paintings, the up close view is so abstracted, but from a distance the seemingly random strokes magically become a realistic scene.
We then visited the Musee D’Orsay, where there are many of Monet’s paintings, but the two that grabbed me were the Gare Saint Lazare, 1877 and the “Poppies”, 1873. Having just seen these spaces in real life, then seeing Monet’s vision, made them come to life in a new way – his capture of the essence of each space was so strong that they still feel the same today as they did over 100 years ago in Monet’s eyes!
-Felice
