Interpretive Resource

Monet’s small garden landscape is quintessentially Impressionist. Its subject is accessible, its colors brilliant, its paint so palpable it seems almost wet. The joyous composition conveys the fullness of the summer of 1873, when Monet’s fortunes were at their brightest. He had a loyal dealer, Paul Durand-Ruel, and his paintings were selling well. His marriage to Camille Doncieux had produced one son, Jean, whom we see in the foreground playing with a hoop, and the couple was quite prosperous. Indeed, they had rented the large house represented here. Monet was, at last, living in the bourgeois style of his own family, who had virtually disowned him for his profession and his alliance with Camille Doncieux. As we can see from this painting alone, times were good.

Monet’s House at Argenteuil is one of several garden landscapes Monet painted in the summer of 1873. The artist had not used his garden as a subject during the previous summer, probably because he had not had sufficient time to cultivate it to the splendor depicted here. In 1873, the flowers were in full bloom, quivering in the slight breeze of a summer day. The series of Dutch blue-and-white pots had probably been purchased by Monet on his trip to Holland in the autumn of 1871. From the evidence of the artist was a brilliant and experimental landscape designer well before he created his celebrated gardens at Giverny.

Many students of Monet have interpreted this painting as an image of loneliness and alienation, stressing the separation of mother from child and of both those figures from Monet, who is painting them. Surely this is wrong. Camille appears to look toward the painter from the central doorway of the amply proportioned facade, and Jean, their son, seems perfectly happy in the shade of the warm summer day. This private, enclosed garden is completely accessible to the viewer, who can imagine himself walking effortlessly over the raked terrace to play with Jean.

The garden itself is utterly modern. Gone are the clipped hedges and shaped trees of the classic French style. They have been replaced with freely planted trees, banks of colorful blossoms, and untrained vines. Yet, this comfortable, bourgeois refuge was not a permanent one for the Monets. The artist’s fortunes changed in the mid-1870's. His success was shortlived, and his fortunes were gradually depleted. The family was forced to leave their house for smaller and cheaper quarters in 1874, and this quintessential Impressionist garden was not re-created until Monet moved to Giverny almost twenty years later.