Painting the Modern Garden: Monet to Matisse
The secret central piece of this exhibition could easily be overlooked, hidden and seemingly lost as is among all the lush garden greens and the manifold voluptuous colors of a wealth of different flowers.
And yet, this painting, which is also one of the smallest of the whole exhibition and at least in terms of colors the dullest of all the works presented — this most inconspicuous work reveals the unspoken secret of all the gardens and flowers painted here.
The painting came to be in one of those ways where destiny knew better than any plans any artist could make. The artist was commissioned to paint a portrait of a 76-year-old lady in her garden, but the eccentric woman wouldn’t sit for him until the daylight was gone. So once the sun had set, she took off her boots and sketched … the boots. These boots she had worn for over three decades while working on numerous gardens -because the old lady was the famous British garden designer Gertrude Jekyll, her boots painted by the artist William Nicholson.
And why is this painting the secret center of gravity of this exhibition? Because it represents all the thousands of hours of unmentioned and unheralded work that made those glorious gardens possible which inspired all those painters from Monet to Matisse to their masterpieces. Without the caring and disciplined toil of hard working gardeners, most of the paintings shown at this exhibition wouldn’t have been created.
This is especially true of Monet’s paintings, which represent 35 of the 120 paintings shown at the Royal Academy. Monet was the most knowledgeable horticulturist of all painters and the various gardens he had throughout his life were all meticulously planned by him. It’s no understatement to claim that without countless hours of garden work in boots just like those painted by Nicholson, there would be no Monet.
But even though Monet is certainly the main focus of this show, there are many other delights one can revel in:
Sun-flooded Bonnards, a vibrant Moroccan garden by Matisse, two unexpectedly enchanting works by Klee, spirited works by Nolde and Klimt, a punch-drunk Kandinsky and many others that you can’t help but linger on for an immeasurable time.
And yet, when it comes to the pure seeing of the raptures of flowers and trees and gardens, no one surpasses Monet’s mastery.
There are the paintings of the famous Japanese footbridge in Giverny, of course, which burst with color and lively vibrancy.
But there are also the eerily sorrowful paintings of the Weeping Willows, which he made to mourn the dead of the first world war, and their bowed branches feel like being weighed down by a flood of tears.
And then, last but not least, there are the waterlilies in his lily pond in Giverny, which he became obsessed with in his late work, painting them again and again … and again.
The Agapanthus Triptych in the last room, with all three panels shown together here for the first time in Europe since Monet painted them, is a lasting testament to the depth of his seeing — Monet was, according to Cézanne, “only an eye”, after all.
Seen together, it’s unfathomable how these three panels could make sense on their own as their sense of profundity is created in those spaces that would be torn apart when the triptych is broken into three parts.
The triptych reveals a subtle but deep truth about Monet`s repeated pursuit of the waterlilies in particular and garden themes in general, as well as any pursuit that one devotes deeply focused time to:
You can’t spend so much time with something in this way and not love it. Monet’s garden worlds are the labour of such love.
