Interpretive Resource

By 1873 Claude Monet’s ongoing commitment to open-air painting and to unconventional, sketch-like finish forced him to seek exhibition venues outside the official Salon. He found a loyal dealer, Paul Durand-Ruel, and began to make plans with his artist colleagues to hold a series of independent shows, the first of which was held in Paris in 1874.

Monet spent the summer before that historic exhibition in Argenteuil, a pleasant town fifteen minutes away from Paris by train. Enjoying—thanks to Durand-Ruel’s purchases—a degree of prosperity for the first time in his career, Monet reveled in the comfort of his home. He designed and cultivated the lush garden seen here, and probably purchased the Dutch blue-and-white pots on a trip to Holland in the fall of 1871. His wife, Camille, appears in a doorway, and their son, Jean, plays with a hoop on the terrace. Weaving together short, staccato brush strokes, Monet created harmonious textures of leaves and light, figures and flowers. Even the shadow cast by the house is warm in tone, made up of yellow, mauve, and mellow gray. It is as if the artist wished to render permanent every aspect, however fleeting, of this idyll.

Unfortunately, Monet’s success of the early 1870s did not last. In 1874 he and his family moved to cheaper quarters in Argenteuil, and, four years later, they returned to Paris. However, the artist did not relinquish his dream of an Impressionist garden. In 1883, almost ten years later, Monet settled in Giverny, where he would again take up the landscape design that he had found so rewarding in Argenteuil.