Giverny: Claude Monet's House and Garden

Giverny – the house and garden where the great Impressionist painter, Claude Monet, lived and created during the second half of his life, from 1883 until his death in 1926. A second tourist destination inNormandy, after Mont Saint Michel. Monet created a green paradise around the house full of trees, shrubs, plants and magnificent flowers, dotted with ponds, in a Japanese inspiration. 

A mythical site where visitors to the house get a taste of the intimacy of Monet's life and his family and feel in the garden as if they have entered one of his paintings, impressed by the colors and reflections of the "Flower Garden" and the "Water Garden."

Claude Monet, who did not have a penny in his pocket at that time in his life, settled in 1883 with his large and extended family in Giverny. In this village, in the heart of nature, he painted the beautiful in his paintings. In this village he lived his last years, in relative solitude, completing his great life's work, while dealing with the mourning of the death of his wife Alice and his eldest son Jean and the mourning of the death of his painter friends. The last of the Impressionists still alive.

The paintings enchant the painter's admirers, as does the garden that served as a model for many of them. Jean-Marie Avisard, the head gardener, who arrived thirty-five years ago as a horticulturalist, now oversees fifteen gardeners. Enthusiastic seasonal workers come from all over the world to assist the permanent staff. The garden has one hundred thousand varieties of flowers and plants that the gardeners are responsible for cultivating in the spirit of Claude Monet.

“The best moment for us is the morning, when there are no visitors yet. The garden is all ours, the sun is rising and the birds are chirping,” says Jean-Marie Ax. But gardeners are never alone. The spirit of the maestro hovers, lingers, lingers. “We never stop asking ourselves,” Ax continues, sharpening his point, “if the creator of the garden would have liked what we do in it. We never stop thinking about him.” 

“We work for Claude Monet,” says American gardener James Priest, “he continues to give us instructions through his writings and through the garden he left behind. We thank him for the wonderful garden he left us and try to convey the pleasure and love we feel for it to visitors. Everyone who comes to the garden falls in love with it.” What a privilege to work in Monet’s garden!

Painting and gardening were Claude Monet's two great passions. His arrival in Giverny in 1883 marked a turning point in his life and artistic career. Monet was 43 years old at the time and did not know at that moment that he would spend another 43 years in this place. Claude Monet arrived in Giverny exactly in the middle of his life.

Why and how Giverny

In 1883, Monet's lease in Poissy, a town about thirty kilometers west of Paris, expired. He did not like the place anyway and wanted to find another place to live. While searching, a peasant's house in the village caught his attention. Giverny (Giverny) which had a vegetable garden and an orchard of sour apple trees adjacent to it called “The Norman Orchard” (Le clos normand).

The village and the house on the garden and the orchard suited him very well, in every way. The village lies in a humid valley, a microclimate, where the Haft stream flows into the Seine. In the early morning, the water droplets evaporate and shine with reflections of all the colors of the rainbow. There could not have been a better location for the painter and gardener who was Claude Monet.

In addition, the house was spacious. A couple with eight children could comfortably live in it. And, not least, the rent was low. What a bargain!

Difficulties

And yet difficulties piled up. During this period, the Impressionist movement, of which Claude Monet was one of its founders, leaders, and important figures, had not yet achieved the sweeping success that would come later. The arrows of ridicule directed against him would turn into caresses of praise, but in the meantime, Claude Monet's financial situation was dire. 

While Camus was still alive, Monet had begun a relationship with Alice Hoschedé, who was married to a wealthy textile merchant, patron, and art collector, Ernest Hoschedé. In the summer of 1876, Ernest invited Claude to live with his family for a while at the Château de Rottembourg, in the town of Montgeron, about nineteen kilometers southwest of Paris, so that he could paint the local landscapes and decorate the living room with his pictures. 

Although Alice and Ernest had five children, four daughters and a son, Alice's charm worked on Claude and some say that her sixth son, Jean-Pierre Ochde, born around the same time as Camille's second son, Michel Monet, is the painter's son. About a year later, the two boys were separated. Ernest's passion for art, especially Impressionism, combined with his lack of control over his business management, drove him to bankruptcy. The Ochde family lost the château.

The two families, the Ausde and the Monet, settled together in a small house in the village of Vétheuil, near Pontoise. Ernest was absent from home most of the time. Camus's health deteriorated greatly and Alice nursed her on her deathbed until the day she died (presumably feeling guilty towards her). Ernest's death allowed Alice and Claude to marry legally.

But not yet, let's not get ahead of ourselves. Monet arrives in Giverny with his partner Alice and her six children and with his two children from the late Camille. Claude Monet is a widower, Alice is divorced. Her husband Ernest will die in 1891. Alice also fed him on his deathbed and made sure to bring him to be buried in Giverny (it is assumed that she also felt guilty towards him). Four months later, Claude will marry her. 

The extended family, two couples with eight children, settled in Giverny, a small village with about three hundred residents at the time, without any idea what future awaited them. The villagers' attitude was not exactly hostile, but their view of the "tribe" was a little concerned, a little curious.

When he began painting a series of poplar trees, their owner came to him and said that he needed money and would cut them down to sell. Monet paid. It was worth it. His agent was Paul Durand-Roel (Paul Durand-Ruel) bought seven paintings from the series from him and dedicated an exhibition to them, only to them.

Harassment, threats, blackmail, but Claude Monet did not give up. Nature was always a source of inspiration for him. In his garden, he would create motifs to his heart's content and copy them in his paintings. And so gardeners do today, but in the opposite direction, from painting to the garden, copying Claude Monet's method of operation, planting flowers in the flowerbed in varied colors, iridescent or in different shades of one dominant color, all the nuances of blue, for example, with small additions of a little purple and a little white. Travelers in the garden feel as if they were inside a painting by Claude Monet. 

Monet uprooted the trees of the “Normandie Orchard” and planted cherry trees, Japanese peach trees, and ornamental trees in their place. The beauty of the blossoming trees was enhanced by the colorfulness of the thousands of flowers he planted in the garden beds: irises, daffodils, wisteria, tulips, poppies, peonies…

Monet designed his garden according to the light, following the sun. He planted flowers in cool colors, blue, purple, pink in the east, and as the sun advanced, the colors of the flowers became warm, yellow, orange to red.

The main avenue (La grande allée), which led from the gate to the front door of the house, was paved with gravel and covered with metal arches over which were twined climbing roses. On either side of it was planted a monastic hat flower, fiery yellow and orange.

The garden becomes Claude Monet's second passion after painting. The painter does not hesitate to borrow money to buy new varieties of flowers. The farmers around him fear that the exotic plants will pollute their fields and poison their animals, but Monet does not shy away. Who cares. The garden of his dreams is growing. 

Prosperity

Monet finally began to succeed and his financial situation improved. This is how he was able to buy the house he had been renting until then in 1890. This is how he was able to realize major projects. In 1891 he bought another garden, later the “Normandie Garden”, in order to design the “Water Garden”. In 1893 he dug the Nymphaeum Pond which involved diverting a tributary of the Epte – called Le Ru, the Epte itself being a tributary of the Seine. An artificial creation in nature that served as a source for the works on the canvas. 

On the pond, on the axis of the “Grand Boulevard”, he built a green arched bridge, in the Japanese style, which allowed for the play of light and shadow. The poplar trees provided the shade while the light passed under the bridge. This was his favorite vantage point for the nymphs, a place of meditation in an atmosphere that seemed mystical. The bridge itself became a model and appears in Monet’s paintings.

Philippe Piguet, one of Monet's step-grandchildren (from Alice Ochsade's side, his grandmother was named Germaine), clarifies and explains that in this venture, beyond Impressionism, Monet became the pioneer of "Land Art" (a movement in contemporary art characterized by large-scale intervention in nature. It is customary to date its emergence around 1967 in the US and to attribute paternity to Robert Smithson). 

Complementing and deepening the exotic atmosphere are ginkgo trees, bamboo bushes, weeping willow bushes, maple bushes, Japanese peony bushes, and lilies. But above all, Monet was mesmerized by the nymphs he discovered at the Universal Exhibition of 1889 - that of Eiffel TowerA botanist named Joseph Bory Latour-Marliac crossed a wild white European nymph with tropical nymphs he bought from collectors, creating ninety colorful varieties, from yellow to red. 

Monet discovered them in the Trocadero pools and was enchanted. He was probably the first in France to plant nymphaea in his garden, a new venture. Latour-Marliac, a botanist and nursery owner, had no idea how different his new client was from all the others… Latour-Marliac invented the colorful nymphaea and Claude Monet popularized them all over the world.

Every day, a gardener would clean the pond water so that it resembled a polished mirror and wet the nymphaea leaves after removing the dust from them so that they would reflect the light well. The essence of Impressionism is to capture the passing light. 

This was also Monet's goal in the upcoming Rouen Cathedral series, to paint it each time under a different light, at different times of the day, in different seasons, in different weather. And so it was with the Haystack series, which each time took on a different color and appearance. It was a revolution. It was not the subject of the painting, not the motif, that was the main thing, but the light, the way it passes through it, caresses it or strikes it. Let there be light and there will be light.

Daily life 

The series enriched Monet and expanded his reputation. Many American painters made a pilgrimage to Giverny. On the one hand, it was flattering, but on the other hand, it was irritating. The presence of the young painters disturbed Monet, who did not tolerate disturbances. In addition, there were four young women at home, the daughters of Alice Schloed, whom he had adopted. The courtship of the young Americans after them was not to his liking.

American painters (including Mary Cassatt) and French painters (Cézanne) stayed at the nearby Hôtel Baudy when they were in Giverny. Madame Baudy made a studio available to them that could be visited, as well as the dining room where they dined. They gave her some of their paintings as gifts. The place has ceased to be a hotel but is now a restaurant (Restaurant Baudy). It is recommended to dine there and it is also recommended to visit the nearby “Museum of Impressionisms” (Le musée des impressionnismes) to complete the picture.

Monet became an authority figure as a painter, a man, and a family man. The lives of the householders revolved around the work of the patriarch, whose studio was on the ground floor of the main building. This studio became a living room after two larger study rooms were installed. In 1886, the second studio, called “The Series,” was designed in the adjacent barn. The third, called “The Large Decorations of the Nymphs,” was erected as a separate building during the First World War.

Monet left the plasterwork on the exterior walls of the house in its original pink color, but he grew a virgin vine that climbed up its facade so that it would blend into the garden. He painted the shutters green, the dining room chrome yellow, including the furniture, audacious for its time. 231 Japanese engravings by the best artists adorned the walls – Japonism was, as is well known, at the height of fashion at the end of the 19th century, and Monet passionately adhered to it and studied it.

Up to sixteen diners, painters, art lovers, writers, could sit around the table. Bonnard, Sisley, Caillebotte, Pissarro, Renoir, Cézanne, Rodin, Sacha Guitry, Octave Mirbeau, Georges Clemenceau, Gustave Geffroy, an art critic and friend of Clemenceau, were among the invitees. Human, mental harmony merged with aesthetic harmony. Monet created for himself the optimal conditions for optimal creation.

A collection that arouses envy and covetousness. He was appointed not once to the entreaties of art dealers and especially his personal agent Paul Durand-Roel who wanted to buy the works. None of them were intended for sale. And how would he part with the representation of his pictorial career? Testimony, memory, the family tree of his life as an artist but also of his life as a person. Paintings showing Camus, his first wife, whom he never sold. Camus with a bouquet of violets, Camus in the garden next to the house where they lived in the city of Argenteuil, northwest of Paris, Camus with his eldest son Jean in the same garden, Camus with Jean and Claude, Camus on her deathbed. The death of Camus, the wife of his youth whom he had known when she was eighteen, the mother of his two sons, had a profound effect on him.

In Monet's house, in the living room, you, the visitors, will see only reproductions of the paintings that hung there during his lifetime. The originals were transferred from Giverny to the museum. Marmot Monet It includes many of his works. I highly recommend visiting it.

Monet's closest friends could see on the walls of his bedroom on the first floor, as far as the bathroom and the corridor leading to the staircase, paintings by Eugène Boudin, Cézanne, Pissarro, Caillebotte, Signac, Renoir, Degas, Manet, Berthe Morisot – painters whose proximity Monet needed, friends and partners in the Impressionist adventure. No painting by Monet himself is to be found in this part of the house. The bedroom, whose three windows were frequently open towards the garden, was a refuge to which he ascended without losing contact with it. The view of it was and still is perfect.

A fixed ritual ruled the day. Meals at fixed times and a table set to perfection. Mona would get up at five, open the window and survey the sky. After that, he would eat a heavy breakfast that included sausages, Cheeses And it was accompanied by a glass of white wine. A child, two or more would help him load the easel, paints, and brushes onto a wheelbarrow, and so he would go out into nature to paint.

At eleven thirty he would return for lunch and the children would leave school early, if necessary, to arrive on time. Although they were subject to a certain regime, they enjoyed playing in the garden and the comforts of the spacious house. Their rooms were on the first floor, adapted to each one. In the blue reading room at the entrance they would spend quality time with their mother Alice and in the garden they would spend time playing and sailing on the water with their father Claude. Bursts of freedom within a strict schedule. With the purchase of an automobile, they would go on cheerful picnics in the great outdoors.

Mona loved to eat and drink well, and the whole family shared the pleasure with him. He only supervised the kingdom of the kitchen from afar; it was not his direct domain, but its design was meticulous, like the rest of the house. Mona took care of the harmony of colors and shapes that dominated it. The blue-and-white Marwan ceramic floors and the light blue lacquered furniture blended with the copper of the pot set. A heartwarming symphony of soothing and calming blue tones.

After dinner, Monet would move to a studio-salon where he would drink, often with friends, plum wine and coffee. Giverny became the center of his life. He owed his artistic and mental balance to his home, garden, and wife. The loyal Alice triumphed over the meticulous system with endless devotion. Alice knew that Claude Monet would remain in history.

And what's more, Monet has become a myth. Every year, the house and garden are visited by about seven hundred thousand visitors from all over the world. Giverny is one of the most sought-after tourist destinations in France. Isn't this proof that Alice was right? The house and garden have not lost their charm. 

The meticulous and extensive renovation over three years of the house and garden that had been neglected after the death of Blanche Audé-Monat, daughter of Alice and widow of Jean Monet, was carried out in accordance with the original. Claude Monet bequeathed the house with its precious contents and the blooming garden to his son Michel, but he was not interested in them and transferred their management to Blanche, the widow of his older brother Jean. The latter, who had been living in the house in Giverny since she lost her husband, devotedly and faithfully guarded the ember and nurtured it for twenty years until her death. Blanche, who admired Claude Monet, a substitute for her father, with whom she painted paintings in the same style. Blanche, Claude Monet's double, his good fairy and perhaps even more so after Alice's death.

In 1980, the Claude Monet Foundation was established and the magical site was opened to the general public.

The Pool of the Nymphs, 1990. Photography and processing: Gilles

Recent years, the highlight – the nymphs

Philippe Figue, Monet's great-grandson, devotes considerable time to researching the family heritage. He has known the house and garden since childhood. And when he looks at his great-grandfather's pictures after Alice's death in 1911, he shares with us, strangers and not strangers, the deep grief of the widower whose world has been shattered after the death of his wife.

Claude Monet, widowed for the second time, Alice, like Camus, died in agony from cancer, sank into a deep depression and stopped painting for months. The statesman Georges Clemenceau, fearing for the life of his good friend, wrote to him dramatically: “If you do not take up your brushes again, I will not come to see you again.” This is the essence of true friendship. A threatening command that benefited the painter and the history of art. 

Monet took up the brush again, the magic tool from which he drew the strength to continue. But a second great grief befell him: in 1914 he lost his eldest son, aged forty-six, Jean, to illness. A wife, a son, and his painter friends slowly disappeared. The deaths of Berthe Morisot, Sisley, Pissarro, and Renoir deeply saddened him.

And again he took up the brush to realize the new project, “The Great Decorations of the Nymphs,” based on previous attempts. The seventy-five-year-old’s appetite was awakened again. “Perhaps I owe my being a painter to flowers,” he once said. One might add, “and to the nymphs the ardor of his last years.”

Here is the place to clarify and explain that the String of Nymphs occupied Monet for about thirty years, from 1890 until his death in 1926. The huge series consists of three hundred images, of which more than forty are in large format. The compositions developed in accordance with the changes that occurred in the garden. 

From the beginning of the project, Monet defines two types of compositions. The first type includes the banks of the lake and their dense vegetation, and later the Japanese bridge, as, for example, in the painting “Ponds of Nymphs”:

The second type focuses, on the contrary, on the void, on the surface of the water dotted with flowers and reflections, as, for example, in the painting “The Nymphs”:

However, it was only from 1914 that he devoted all his energy to execution. In the large, bright studio he built at the time (now the museum boutique) he painted the “large decorations of the nymphs,” panels two meters high and three to five meters wide. This was the first time he painted in a studio and not in nature. Monet painted the surface of the lake without a horizon, no perspective for these paintings that have no beginning and no end except the border of the frame. 

This is the second breakthrough that Peretz has been credited with in the history of art. A picture of water and fire that turns on its head a tradition of thousands of years of painting. Art no longer seeks to be faithful to nature. It is nature that submits itself to the painter's gaze to the level of the abstract. 

Some of the monumental nymph paintings are displayed inThe Orangery MuseumMonet donated nineteen panels as a gift to the nation, “I want to participate in victory,” he wrote to his friend Georges Clemenceau after the signing of the armistice in 1918. How the painter managed to do them, the physical and mental investment they required, was inconceivable.

Moreover, he was plagued by a serious health problem. His vision was blurred due to double cataracts and he refused surgery for fear of blindness. The loss of vision contributed to the abstract nature of the works, which surprised art critics. They did not like what they saw, which was very different from all the previous paintings. See here how the Japanese Bridge painting became almost abstract:

Claude Monet, The Japanese Bridge, 1918-1924. The painting is in the public domain.

Ultimately, Monet yielded to Clemenceau's entreaties and agreed to surgery on his right eye, which he underwent in 1923. Monet was not satisfied with the results of the surgery but was able to paint until the day he died thanks to the wearing of optical sunglasses. 

Monet went crazy about one thing. “I planted the nymphs without any intention of painting them,” he said, “I grew them for pleasure only. The view does not fill you in a day. Then, suddenly, the discovery of the legendary charm of the lake struck me. From that moment on, I painted nothing but the nymphs.”

The nymphs are the crowning glory of his work, his ultimate legacy. It was difficult for him to part with them. He did not want to see them leave the place and postponed their handover, to Clemenceau's being. 

Claude Monet died in Giverny in 1926 at the age of 86. When the moment came, Blanche called Clemenceau. “Are you suffering?” the good friend asked him. “No,” Monet replied, “but this is the end.” Monet asked to be buried like one of the peasants, without flowers and without honors. “I was only a painter who testified to the beauty of the world with the brush,” he told Clemenceau. The latter, however, removed the black cloth that covered the coffin to cover it with a floral tablecloth.

Six months later, the permanent exhibition of panoramic paintings at the Orangerie opened to the public. A waterscape dotted with nymphs, willow branches, reflections of trees and clouds, spreads out over a hundred meters before the eyes of the spectators, giving “the illusion of an endless whole, of a wave without horizon and without shore,” in Monet’s own words.

On the eve of the exhibition's opening, Clemenceau asked to be alone with the paintings. He stayed for a long time and left the museum in tears. Without Clemenceau, Monet would not have agreed to the eye surgery; without Clemenceau, the nymphs would not have found a place in the Orangerie. 

Success was not immediate but came later. It was again helped by the American interest in Monet, which had already been evident since 1873 with the help of his agent Paul Dirren-Roel, who opened up the broad art market overseas for him. At an exhibition held by Dirren-Roel in New York in 1886, many of Monet's paintings were sold to "Yankees," as they were called at the time. And if the major American collectors are buying Monet, Degas, and other painters, it's a sign that something is up... The French market is also opening up, following the American market, and all thanks to Dirren-Roel.

Painters from the late 1940s, such as Pollock, Rothko, Newman, Still, owe the elderly maestro the birth of what is called “All Over Painting,” that is, a painting without a center in which no part of it is more important than another. Later generations are also influenced, the Minimalism movement, for example, of which “Land Art” is a part that applies its principles and ideas to spaces in the landscape and nature, in the environment.

The Americans' interest in Monet swept away the rest. Art lovers from all corners of the world began to marvel and be moved by the wonders of nature, deepened and expanded by the fingers holding the brush of an exceptionally talented man. How many are your works, all of them done with wisdom.

Claude Monet gave not only France but also the history of art a gift that reflects the absolute beauty of the world. 

Want to visit Giverny?

If the article has aroused in you a desire to visit or revisit this gem that the world has to offer, you are invited to read the article. Giverny and Monet's House – Tourist InformationYou will find information on how to get to Giverny, how to purchase tickets, places to stay, other places in the village that are worth seeing, and more. In short, everything you need for a successful visit to Giverny.

Note

The article is based largely on three documentaries, episodes from series:

Secrets d'Histoire – Claude Monet: jardins secrets à Giverny, FRANCE TV 3, August 2011

UNE MAISON, UN ARTISTE – Claude Monet à Giverny, FRANCE TV 5, June 2022

Des maisons d'artistes – la maison de Monet à Giverny, Arte.tv, April 2023