Garden in Giverny by Claude Monet is a painting that celebrates the colour in Monet’s own garden in Giverny. The deep purples and pinks of the planted flowers give the painting an impression of colour and heat.

Garden in Giverny ~ Claude Monet

Garden in Giverny by Monet is one of many works by the artist of his garden at Giverny over the last thirty years of his life. The painting shows rows of irises in various shades of purple and pink set diagonally across the picture plane. The flowers are under trees allowing dappled light to change the tone of their colours. Beyond the trees is a glimpse of Monet’s house. Monet worked on and developed the garden that is the subject of the painting from the end of 1883 until the end of his life.

Claude Monet

Claude Monet was born on November 14, 1840, in Paris, France. He enrolled in the Academie Suisse. After an art exhibition in 1874, a critic insultingly dubbed Monet’s painting style “Impression,” since it was more concerned with form and light than realism, and the term stuck. Monet struggled with depression, poverty, and illness throughout his life. He died in 1926.

Monet gained financial and critical success during the late 1880s and 1890s and started the serial paintings for which he would become well-known. In Giverny, he loved to paint outdoors in the gardens that he helped create there. The water lilies found in the pond had a particular appeal for him, and he painted several series of them throughout the rest of his life; the Japanese-style bridge over the pond became the subject of several works, as well. (In 1918, Monet would donate 12 of his waterlily paintings to the nation of France to celebrate the Armistice.)