Thursday, July 18, 2013

Giverny

Suppose you were an artist.  I mean a good old-fashioned artist who puts brush to canvas and produces an image that starts in his/her mind and an approximation of it is transferred to yours.  And suppose your preferred style just happens to be sweeping the art world by storm at the moment when you are hitting your stride.  Then you'd have what Claude Monet (almost rhymes with "money", doesn't it?) had in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.  The style was Impressionism, and in Monet's case, many of the scenes he was painting impressions of were floral.  For part of his life, Monet lived in a houseboat on the Seine, floating up and downstream looking for scenes to paint.  But financial success came his way and he bought a house in the village of Giverny about 70 Km from Paris and he settled in to paint.  He died wealthy, but near-blind from cataracts, surgery for which was not successful.

Since flowers were his thing, he took up gardening.  Today, his back yard looks like this:


Tucked into the trees in the upper part of the picture is a water garden that provided source material for his magnum opus Water Lilies (mentioned in the description of L'Orangerie a few days ago).


Monet was a big fan and student of Japanese art.  His house is loaded with prints, including quite a few Hiroshige pieces (no photos, please).  And one of the most recognizable structures in a Japanese garden is the bridge.


It's easy in a place like this to get lost in the scale of the thing.  But if you pay close enough attention, you find exquisite samples like this:


Anita remarked as to what one can do with an adequate supply of water.  I rained on her parade by pointing out that at that point we had passed at least four gardeners slogging away in the 90-degree heat and 60% humidity.  So it's not just about the water.

It's warm here.  But it's cool underground, where I will spend part of the day tomorrow.  While you're waiting, break out your Les Miserables soundtrack and play the M. Thenardier song about the sewers of Paris; that'll put you in the mood for tomorrow's activity.