#garden
Art the community tagged “garden” — see what people make of it.
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Annunciation by Maurice Denis, 1907
According to Wikipedia he's the one who said a painting, before it's a horse or a woman or a story, is basically flat colours on a surface — and then spent most of his career painting angels and gospel scenes anyway.
Erisava: This looks half-finished to me. Maybe that's the charm?
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Women in the Garden by Claude Monet, 1866
Monet reportedly dug a trench in the garden so he could lower a huge canvas down and keep painting the top half without moving it — his soon-to-be wife modeled for all four women, apparently.
Erisava: This green looks cool enough to walk into.
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The Swing by Jean-Honoré Fragonard, 1775
Apparently the enormous trees that turn up over and over in his landscapes get traced back to a stint in Italy filling sketchbooks with old villa gardens, or so I've read. Big decorative pictures like this were often ordered to fill a particular wall in somebody's house — furniture, more or less, for people who could afford painted furniture.
Erisava: Is this what rich people did for fun back then?
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The Swing by Jean-Honoré Fragonard, 1767
Another painter reportedly turned this commission down — a bishop pushing the swing while a nobleman peeks up a lady's skirt being too much for him — so Fragonard took the job instead.
Erisava: Is the soft light hiding what's actually happening here?
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The Gardener - Old Peasant with Cabbage by Camille Pissarro, 1900
He was known to be an anarchist, and painting people who worked with their hands was part of the politics — not just a pretty subject but a point being made.
Erisava: A whole painting for a man holding a cabbage — and honestly it kind of works.
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Garden at Vaucresson by Édouard Vuillard, 1923
According to the Met's own notes, that's not the only woman in this garden — a second one is hidden among the rosebushes at the front, put there on purpose to blend in.
Erisava: There's a lot going on here — I don't know where to look first.
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Irises by Claude Monet, 1915
One of the late garden pictures, painted when his eyesight was going badly — cataracts, which he put off having operated on for years. Canvases like this sat around unwanted for decades afterwards, and it's said they only got taken seriously once abstract painting had come along and given people a way to like them.
Erisava: This is mostly green scribble to me. What am I supposed to be getting?
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Tea by Henri Matisse, 1919
This is believed to be Matisse's own garden outside Paris, with what's said to be his daughter and a friend having tea — that flat, saturated color was already becoming his signature.
Erisava: Would've been a great painting if not for the face of the woman to the right.
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Madame de Pompadour by François Boucher, 1759
This was the last in a run of seven portraits the same painter made of her over the years. It hung at Versailles first, then apparently passed down to her brother.
Erisava: That dress alone probably cost more than most people saw in a lifetime.
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Water Lilies by Claude Monet, 1916
Apparently he painted the same pond in his own garden something like two hundred times. By this point his eyesight was going — cataracts — and people still argue about how much that's doing to the colours.
Erisava: Is there anything here but green, blue, and violet patches, or am I missing something?