Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Monet painting in his garden at Argenteuil. 1873 Wordsworth Athenaeum Art Museum, Hartford, Connecticut, USA
Claude Monet and Auguste Renoir were friends. At one time they worked side by side a lot. As a result, their paintings are very similar in appearance. This is especially evident in Renoir's painting Monet Painting in the Garden at Argenteuil.
This was in the 70s of the 19th century. At this time, Monet rented a house with his family in Argenteuil, a suburb of Paris. It was cheaper. There were many more inspiring landscapes here for the true.
And in the summer of 1873, Renoir visits. He decides to paint a portrait of a friend at work. Monet at this time is painting dahlias in a neighboring garden. Of course, outdoors. Palette and brushes in his hands. And even an umbrella under the easel.
Monet's influence on other artists
Monet did not pose for this picture. He actually worked. Here is the painting he was working on when he painted himself in the garden.
Claude Monet. The artist's garden at Argenteuil (Corner of the garden with dahlias). 1873 National Gallery of Art, Washington It seems that both paintings were painted by the same artist. So huge was the influence of Monet on Renoir.
Monet will live in Argenteuil for 6 years. They will be the most fruitful in his work. They started buying it. Therefore, the family lived in abundance. It seems that all the hungry days are over. And nothing portends the tragedy that will happen to his wife Camilla in a few years. Read more about this in the article.
Monet influences other artists like never before. This is his triumph. What could be more gratifying than when someone tries to imitate you. The dawn of impressionism has come.
Mysterious portrait of Camille Monet
Another curious fact is connected with Renoir's painting “Monet painting in the garden”.
Not so long ago, museum specialists took an x-ray of the canvas. It turned out that under it is a portrait of Camille, the wife of Claude Monet. It is not known who wrote it.
Possibly Renoir. Something he did not like in the work, and he decided to paint another picture. A good canvas was not a cheap pleasure. Artists often painted one picture on top of another.
Only a master from a wealthy family could buy a canvas in unlimited quantities, such as, for example, or. Or, who received a good monthly allowance from his brother.
Therefore, so many paintings by Van Gogh have been preserved. He could afford a quality canvas. Unlike, for example, Gauguin and Cezanne. Some of their works have been lost, among other things, due to the fact that they wrote on anything.
One composition - two paintings by Manet and Renoir
Perhaps the portrait of Camilla was painted by himself. Something he did not like, and he gave it to a friend. At least the same story will happen a year later. Summer of 1874. In the same Argenteuil.
Came to Monet. Camille, Monet's wife and his son Jean, are located in the garden under a tree. Manet began to paint a picture.
Edward Mane. The Monet family in a garden at Argenteuil. 1874 Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Renoir arrived unexpectedly. I saw that Manet was working. Apparently, he was very inspired by posing people. He asked Monet to give him a canvas, paints and brushes. Got to work. And in parallel with Manet created his own painting.
Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Madame Monet with her son. 1874 National Gallery of Art, Washington I think the same thing happened the year before. Monet worked in his garden.
What a wonderful game
flowers started in the pond.
Hello dear friends.
Recently, I have been writing a lot of practical posts for hostesses on the blog, but today I decided to move away from the topic of the kitchen. And green sorrel borscht (which I wanted to write to Irishka Dubrovskaya about), and a set of Bergner pots from Profit-Torg, and other kitchen subtleties, can wait a bit, I decided.
Living Pictures: Claude Monet and his famous garden
Today I invite you to touch the world of beauty. The conversation will be about the living paintings of Claude Monet.
In the mid-eighties of the 19th century, thanks to the fact that Monet's paintings began to be regularly sold, he became financially independent and was able in 1890 to buy land and a house in Giverny, where he created his own paradise on earth, his home and the beautiful garden of Claude Monet.
What a wonderful game
flowers started in the pond.
Each flower has a leaf
it pulls the neck to the east.
In the eyes of his desire to live
and bring joy to the world.
Flowers play in the silence of the pond,
they can do it sometimes.
And the bushes are tender,
and smiling bridges.
Probably out of love
suddenly their backs arched.
What silence, what plein air ...
No wonder Monet created a masterpiece.
And we can only dream
like visiting Giverny.
Nadezhda Levina
From artist to gardener
Immediately, like everyone else, for an unmarried couple with eight children, everything was not easy. Settling in Giverny, Claude and Alice Hoschede aroused suspicion among the peasant environment. Especially the profession of the head of the family - the artist - did not impress the patriarchal peasants. And Monet really looked interesting: every morning he wandered through the fields, accompanied by children who, on a cart, carried canvases, paints and brushes behind him.
Despite all the troubles of life, disagreements with the peasants, Monet, from a swampy area overgrown with grass and weeds, created one that went down in history.
Claude Monet really got carried away: he subscribed to almost all magazines and books on gardening, studied the translation of the famous "Illustrated History of Horticulture" by George Nichols, collected seed catalogs and ordered all kinds of novelties in the world of flowers from nurseries.
The artist thought out the color layout of the garden to the smallest detail, and each season had its own color scheme. In spring, the garden was ablaze with tulips and daffodils, then lilacs, wisteria, rhododendrons blossomed. And in summer, the garden turned into a real sea of irises, which Monet simply adored. Irises were replaced by daylilies and peonies, lilies and poppies. At the height of the hot summer, bluebells, morning glory, snapdragons and, of course, roses of various shapes and colors bloomed.
Monet painted with flowers and wrote flowers. His fellow artists often visited him at the estate. Paul Cezanne, Matisse, Renoir, Camille Pissarro and others admired the garden here. Friends, knowing about Claude Monet's hobby, brought him plants as a gift. So in the famous garden, for example, a tree peony appeared, it was brought from Japan.
Claude Monet "Monet's Garden at Giverny"
From the swamp to the water garden
10 years after arriving in Giverny, Monet buys a swampy plot of land that bordered his plot through the railroad tracks. He drained it. And then he made a small ditch that connected his site with the Epta River. Thanks to this, he was able to fill the artificial lake with water. This is how a wild pond turned into a marvelous pond "with aquatic plants for entertainment and relaxation for the eyes, as well as a plot for drawing."
The reservoir Claude Monet densely planted with irises, ferns, rose bushes, azaleas and arrowhead. Luxurious tropical water lilies and nymphs of various varieties were planted in the reservoir itself.
Several wooden bridges were thrown across the pond. The most famous is the Japanese bridge. He, entwined with white wisteria lace, Monet painted especially often. You can get into the artist's water garden only through the tunnel, which is laid under the railway. Every visitor freezes here, recognizing the world-famous paintings by Monet.
Claude Monet drew his inspiration from the water garden for almost 20 years. He wrote: “... the revelation of my fabulous, wonderful pond came to me. I took the palette, and since that time I have had almost no other models.
About a hundred sketches and finished paintings were written on the theme of water lilies alone.
And if you consider that the canvases were painted during the threat of exacerbation of glaucoma in the artist, then they cause even greater admiration. Small details became increasingly difficult to distinguish, and all these nuances were replaced by large strokes of paint that showed the play of shadow and light. According to American researchers, this is what made Monet one of the founders of informal abstract art.
After an eye operation, Claude Monet's vision improved and new masterpieces began to appear.
After the death of the artist (1926), the garden gradually began to fall into disrepair. The son of the artist Michel Monet in 1966 transferred the estate to the Academy of Fine Arts, which began the restoration of the house, and then the amazing garden of Claude Monet was also restored. The whole picture of the estate was restored from fragments of memories scattered all over the world: photographs, sketches, photographs, essays by journalists ...
And in 1980, visitors reappear in the legendary garden. Nowadays, the artist's estate is visited by more than half a million people a year. The garden is open to visitors daily from 9.30 to 18.00, except Mondays.
I offer you, friends, another small video demonstration of some of the paintings by Claude Monet, accompanied by the music of Frederic Chopin.
As they say, it was love at first sight. When the famous Impressionist Claude Monet rode a train past the village of Giverny, he was struck by the lush greenery of the area. The artist realized that he would spend the rest of his life here. It was Giverny that became the main inspiration for the painter, and the gardens, which Monet spent half his life landscaping, are today considered a real treasure of France.
Claude Monet settled in Giverny in 1883. At that time, money was difficult for the family, and he barely had enough money to rent the estate. But a few years later, the artist's business went uphill, his paintings began to sell well, and in 1890 Monet managed to buy the estate. Having become the full owner of this place, the artist expanded the house and started creating another of his masterpieces - a flower garden.
The artist cut down coniferous trees and replaced them with rose bushes, the garden was moved deep into the site so as not to spoil the flower garden with its appearance. The work on the arrangement of the garden took more than one year. At first, his children and wife helped him, and then Monet hired a whole group of gardeners. The artist carefully thought out the whole flower ensembles.
The French statesman Georges Clemenceau once noted: “With amazing subtlety, the artist of light remade nature in such a way that it helped him in his work. The garden was an extension of the workshop. From all sides you are surrounded by a riot of colors, which is good gymnastics for the eyes. The gaze jumps from one to the other, and from constantly replacing each other shades the optic nerve is more and more excited, and nothing can pacify this delight.
Monet's most famous paintings were painted in Giverny. The artist's wife Alice Oshede also said: "The garden is his workshop, his palette". The impressionist himself admitted to journalists in an interview that everything he earned went to the gardens.
The death of her beloved Alice in 1911 greatly shocked Monet. On this basis, the artist began to develop cataracts. His paintings became more and more blurred, but the painter did not stop writing and working in the garden.
When Claude Monet passed away in 1926, his son Michel inherited the estate. Unfortunately, he did not share his father's passion for flowers. The paintings were sold, the house fell into disrepair, and the magnificent flower gardens were overgrown with weeds.
Michel Monet died in a car accident in 1966. He had no heirs and, according to his will, the Giverny estate became the property of the Academy of Fine Arts (Académie des Beaux Arts). Then the academy did not have the funds to restore the estate, which was in a deplorable state. The famous Japanese bridge, destroyed by rodents, rotted more and more every year, furniture was broken by vandals, the garden turned into an overgrown area.
In 1976, the restoration of the estate of Claude Monet was taken up by Gérald Van der Kemp, who became famous for the restoration of Versailles. The energetic restorer turned to American patrons for help, and the funds were found. It took many years before the Giverny estate regained its former splendor. To date, the gardens of Claude Monet are considered a national treasure of France.
Claude Monet himself miraculously became an artist. allow you to look at the work of the artist from a different angle.
From Rouen the road led us to Giverny, to visit Claude Monet.
"I'm good for nothing but painting and gardening." Claude Monet.
One day, Monet, passing by the train near the village of Giverny, which is 80 kilometers from Paris, drew attention to its picturesqueness, to the peaceful picture of village life, blooming gardens, peace and tranquility, spilled in the air.
In 1883, he first rents, and after 7 years he buys a large brick house with a garden and a vegetable garden on 1 hectare of land. This is how it looks in Monet's painting (all reproductions used here are from paintings by Claude Monet):
I saw him like this: 
After 3 years, he buys a plot across the railway (today there is a highway and an underpass). Here he diverts a canal from a tributary of the River Epte to create a pond and a water garden. 
In this estate, he will happily live the second half of his life, 43 years old, with his sons Jean and Michel, with his beloved second wife Alice and her six children (the first wife, Camille, died at the age of 32 from tuberculosis). 
He is already a well-known artist, well-earned, respected and loved by friends, he often has impressionist artists in his estate and at the Giverny hotel, among them there are many foreigners, especially Americans who want to study with the master of impressionism.
(Claude Monet in Giverny. In the photo - the far right)
I have seen a lot of house-museums and memorial estates in Russia, I don’t really like them because of their “lifeless” and “non-residential” appearance, the cords that enclose the entrance to the rooms, the caretakers who vigilantly monitor visitors ... Everything in Giverny “breathes” with presence Monet, you can walk freely in a pink house with green shutters,
look at the paintings on the walls (unfortunately, copies)
look into the studio, from which he seemed to have just left, look out the window from which he admired his garden, getting up every morning at 5 o'clock and setting off to write sketches.
You can see the bedroom, with copies of his work and paintings of friends,
See what the dining room looked like with Japanese prints - his hobby, and the kitchen
There is a regular garden in front of the house, in which Monet planned the planting of flowers, bushes and trees in such a way that they would constantly bloom, replacing each other from early spring to late autumn.
Monet created his garden as a work of art, as a big picture, considering perspective, form, color, light, and shadow.
But his favorite place was the Japanese water garden. He said: “... The revelation of my fabulous, wonderful pond came to me. I took the palette, and since that time I have almost never had another model.
He was always fascinated by the idea of conveying reflections in the water in the picture, water reflections and, of course, water lilies, white and multi-colored, which had not previously been in France. Four years before Monet began to equip his water garden, in 1889 at the World Exhibition in Paris, he saw multi-colored water lilies bred by a French breeder.
Claude Monet painted more than 270 paintings, which depict his water garden, a bridge entwined with wisteria (there are 6 of them in the garden),
famous water lilies, the reflection of the sky and weeping willows in the water, vibrant color, gentle shadows.
In 1912, Monet underwent two cataract operations and began to see white as blue or purple in the ultraviolet, so we can often see a lot of blue in his paintings of those years.
In 1911, his wife Alice died, and soon his eldest son Jean, Monet fell into depression. His stepdaughter Blanche Goshede (or Oshede), who was married to Jean, after the death of her husband moved to Giverny in 1913, helped Monet, being a good artist herself, supported him until the end of her life. One of the streets in Giverny today bears her name.
In 1926, Claude Monet died of lung cancer at the age of 86 and was buried in the local cemetery. The house and garden passed to the youngest son Michel, but he lived in Paris, Blanche and the senior gardener looked after the garden, trying to keep everything in its original form. The manor and garden were damaged during the war, Michel sold his father's collection of paintings to private museums in the 50s, many paintings by Monet and his friends ended up in the United States. After Michel's death in a car accident, Monet's house and garden were bequeathed (Michel had no children) to the French Academy of Fine Arts. The remaining paintings went to the Marmottan Monet Museum in Paris, which today houses the largest collection of works by Claude Monet.
In the 70s, great work was carried out to restore the house, garden, and the surrounding landscapes; today they have almost the same appearance as during Monet's lifetime.
If it were not for the large number of tourists filling the rooms of the house and wandering along the paths of the garden, then you would have a complete impression of how the great artist lived here. And maybe it would even seem to you that he is sitting by the pond on a foggy morning and drawing his adorable water lilies or relaxing on a bench in his garden.…
Near the estate, if you are tired and hungry, you can have a bite to eat in a cozy cafe serving dishes from the famous Norman ducks,
or watch the white Norman cows, they say, and in Monet's time they also grazed in the meadows near the estate.
All photos of the estate and the house were taken by me in Giverny in August 2015.
A picturesque place is located 80 kilometers north of Paris Giverny (Giverny). Hundreds of thousands of tourists from all over the world, hundreds of thousands of people who are not indifferent to beauty, make a pilgrimage here. An impressionist artist lived and worked here for forty-three years. Claude Monet.
In 1883, the artist bought a house in this village, where he settled with his entire large family. Monet idolized nature. He was fond of gardening, bought books, and took great interest in the land near his new home. (continued below Y.K.)
WHAT GOOD MATERIAL TO SEE
HOW PHOTOS ARE POOR TO PAINTING
______ Monet's garden and his paintings _______
with horror and haste the eye runs
from the natural garden in the photos
to relax on Monet's painting
think gratefully
- thanks for seeing the real garden
but how poor he is regarding pictures
not in a real garden - and thoughts and feelings
which are to the pictures
and even more marked the abyss
between photography and painting
and even more clear naive stupidity - what's on the canvas
(hyperrealists but essentially photographers)
use photographic unnecessary turns out to be "accuracy"
losing the generality of precious art
just looking at the field is nice
but hear what
- "to live life is not a field to cross"
much more meaningful
because in addition to the field there is a generalization of art
=======
my hello Monet
behind the gate
==========
continuation
The artist exchanged seeds with other gardeners, carried on an active correspondence with nurseries. For local peasants, “urban” ones were an unusual sight. The artist did not shun any dirty work in the garden, the locals respected him very much.
The Monet family for a walk in the garden (artist on the right)
Édouard Manet "The Monet Family in the Garden"
Monet at his house in Giverny
At first, the house and the surrounding land occupied no more than 1 hectare. But after 10 years, when Monet's financial affairs went well, he bought another plot, which was separated from the old one by the railway. Later it was replaced with a roadbed for cars, so Monet's territory remained divided.
Thanks to artistic talent and diligence, what used to be just a vegetable garden near the house turned, thanks to Monet, into a real celebration of color, light and beauty. He planted everything with various kinds of flowers and plants.
The artist was so fond of plants and flowers (which means an abundance of colors during their flowering!) that when he got a voluminous catalog of flower seeds, he did not spend much time studying it and ordered everything! Roses, lilies, wisterias, tulips, daisies, sunflowers, gladioli, asters - all this met the eyes of the Monet family and their guests.
But the second part of the garden, behind the highway, causes special attention and awe among visitors. This is the so-called water garden. You can get there through a tunnel. Everyone who comes here involuntarily freezes, holding his breath, seeing the masterpiece created by the great artist, recognizing the plots of his world-famous paintings.
Claude Monet "White Water Lilies"
Claude Monet "Waters"
Claude Monet "Waters. Green reflection, left side"
He drained the marshland, formed ponds and channels, skillfully directing the water of the Epte River into them.
The shores of the pond were decorated with a variety of plants - raspberries, holly, Japanese sakura, anemones, peonies and many others. The main attraction of the garden is the Japanese bridge, entwined with wisteria, which simply cannot fail to recognize lovers of the artist's work. And most importantly, Monet ordered the seeds of nymphs (water lilies) from Japan and decorated the water surface of the pond with them. Nymphaeums of different varieties were planted in the pond, weeping willows, bamboo, irises, rhododendrons and roses were planted along the banks.
The garden for Monet became his muse and his main occupation. Claude Monet wrote about water lilies:
“I planted them for pleasure, without even thinking that I would write them. And suddenly, unexpectedly, the revelation of my fabulous, wonderful pond came to me. I took the palette, and since that time I have almost never had another model.
The painting technique of this artist is different in that he did not mix paints. And he placed them side by side or layered one on top of the other with separate strokes. Monet's favorite manner of working in series allowed him not to ignore the slightest nuances of color, light - since each shade of the state of nature could be dedicated to a separate canvas. Japanese bridge? - 18 options. Pond with white water lilies? - 13 paintings. Water lilies? - 48 paintings. And the list could go on and on...
Claude Monet "Water Lilies and Japanese Bridge"
In 1916, when he was already 76 years old, he built a spacious studio to the right of the main house, which was called the "Water Lily Studio". Here the artist realized his last grandiose idea - he created panels depicting water lilies, which formed a circular panorama of about 70 m in circumference.
These paintings he donated to France, and they were placed in a specially built pavilion, which is located on the edge of the Tuileries Garden, where it opens onto the Place de la Concorde. If you look at the pavilion from above, it looks like a figure eight. In two oval rooms connected by a lintel, paintings depicting a pond in Giverny are hung: six or eight canvases. In essence, this is one picture that conveys changes in nature in the course of the day that are inaccessible to the ordinary eye.
Art critics say that painting here has reached such perfection that it blurred the line between realism and abstract art. Claude Monet just stopped the moment, because everything goes away, but nothing disappears, and life is always waiting for the next day. It was a lifetime triumph of the work of Claude Monet.
Claude Monet "Water lilies (clouds)"
Claude Monet "Pond with water lilies and irises"
Corner of the garden in Montgeron.
Pond in Montgeron
Camille Monet with her son in the garden
