“My garden is my best masterpiece”he came to say Claude Monetdedicated exactly during half of his 86 years of life to the composition of his multicolored paradise in Giverny70 kilometers from Paris and in the bucolic heart of Normandy. There the master of impressionism had the source of daily inspiration for his painting. And there, after decades of abandonment, the prodigious explosion of colors, aromas and sensations occurs again, after decades of abandonment, to the greater delight of more than half a million visitors every year.
Water lilies are supposed to bloom until September, but the late summer has meant that Monet’s water gardenwith the Japanese bridge in the background, still retains part of its splendor. And that’s not to mention the explosion of colors in the other garden, the Clos Normandwith that succession of lilies, tulips, gladioli and daffodils that seem to defy the arrival of autumn.
Because Monet, a self-taught gardener, had a predilection for bulbous plants and wanted above all “a colorful English garden”distantly inspired by the orchard created by Consul Francesco Moreno in Bordighera (Italy), where he consolidated his vocation as an open-air painter and discovered how far the fruitful collaboration of man and nature can go.
Giverny was in some way his three-dimensional canvas, its “great decoration”. That long, pink-painted house, which he fell in love with when he saw it from the train, would end up becoming its testing laboratory in the heart of Normandy. He began by uprooting a large part of the apple trees in the original garden, much to the derision of his second wife, Alice. And little by little he filled almost everything with bulbs, greatly influenced by his first great passion, tulips, the result of his stay in Holland.
Monet leaned on his head gardener, Felix Breuilbut he let himself be guided by his instinct and intuition: “Nature is not rigid”. He himself raked, planted, watered and established a very personal relationship with his plants. “He looks like a lifelong gardener, squat and confident”warned art critic Marc Elder during one of his visits. “He combines coarseness with spring lightness, although his gaze is sharp, intentional, searching, unexpected.”
Its more or less diffuse goal was that the garden would change color every 15 daysfollowing a chaotic order that he himself meticulously recorded. “My garden is a slow work, made with love. And I confess that I feel proud!”, acknowledged Monet himself, who used to invite Giverny to his circle of impressionist friends, which the Prime Minister eventually joined. Georges Clemenceau (passionate, like him, about gardening).
Clemenceau’s intervention ended up being proverbial so that Monet could give free rein to his imagination and retina with a second oasis of Japanese inspiration, the water garden. The pond is not natural, it was necessary to divert a small stream, the Ru, with waters from the Epte River, a tributary of the Seine. Neighbors initially opposed the project, fearing that “rare plant species” would end up poisoning the water.
Water lilies in Monet’s water garden.
In a letter to the prefect of Eure, Monet himself described his intentions: “It is only something for recreation and pleasure of the eyes, and also to have models to paint. “I only grow plants such as water lilies, reeds and lilies of different varieties that grow spontaneously along our rivers and can never poison the water.”
“Landscapes of water and reflections have become my obsession,” he would admit some time later, with his little paradise converted into his open-air studio. Over three decades, it would serve as the painter’s greatest inspiration with the series The Water Liliesa total of 250 oil works culminated in the eight large-format paintings that he ended up creating in his greenhouse, urged on by the falls and spurred on by his friend Clemenceau.
The persistence of the artist and the vision of the politician, united by the passion for bulbs, ended up forging into that experience of total immersion in his water garden named The Nympheás and installed in the two oval rooms of the L’Orangerie Museum in Paris. The disappointment with which it was received in 1927 – neither the public nor the critics understood what a painting without beginning or end was – contrasts with the fascination it arouses after a century.
A restoration as complicated as that of a painting
The same sensation but the opposite (being immersed in a painting by Monet) invades today visitors to the artist’s garden in Giverny, which He fell into a state of total abandonment after his deathuntil his son Michel Monet He decided to bequeath the property to the Academy of Fine Arts in 1976.
Then began a laborious restoration work as complicated or more complicated than that of a painting. The mission of returning Monet’s “masterpiece” to its former splendor was entrusted to Gerald Van der Kemprestorer of the gardens of Versailles. Der Kemp relied on a local horticulturist and also a painter, Gilbert Vahéso that the gardens could recover at the same time “their spirit and their essence.”
“Our mission was to make the garden look as fresh and alive as the one Monet knew, with that uninterrupted succession of flowers from April to October“recalls Vahé. “It was about combining our experience as gardeners with that developed by the artist 100 years ago, coinciding with the peak of French horticulture and with that magical light of Giverny that captivated Monet and that his flowers adored.”
Clos Normand de Monet en Giverny.
Ten full-time gardeners participated in the two-year restoration, based on the abundant photographs (in black and white) and the diaries in which Monet meticulously recorded his work. “Nature was the one that set the calendar every yearalthough there is always an element of surprise and unpredictability,” Vahé recalls. “No one can guarantee when exactly irises, wisterias or even roses will bloom. And even less so are water lilies, which require a minimum water temperature of 16 degrees for a month to bloom.”
The water lily season used to be from May to September, but this particularly warm autumn has extended the flowering until October, when the weeping willows begin to yellow and the garden (which is temporarily closed to the public between November and March) lives out its last days of impressionistic delirium.
Gilbert Vahé, who looked after Monet’s garden since 1977 (with a six-year break when he was relieved by the British gardener James Priest), This year he handed over the hoe of head gardener to Jean-Marie Avisardwhich has promised to be faithful to the artist’s designs with the same spirit of innovation and moving towards the goal of 100% ecological.
“Impressionism is characterized by the abundance of colors with small touches, nuances and very specific combinations of tones,” says Avisard. “Our role as gardeners is to do the same job with a great variety and nuances of color in each flowerbed, to give the impression of actually walking through a painting by the master“.