Impressionism in the early 1880s. Not only did it offer the opportunity to work en plein air without strenuous or costly travel, it also represented a setting with which the painter was intimately familiar. At the same time, the domestic garden was also a place where nature could be transformed in accord with personal preferences and where the “backdrop” of each painting could be tailored through the selection of plants as well as the formal arrangement of terraces, garden paths, and decorative accessories.
Today, Monet’s affinity for horticulture is associated with the water garden he built in Giverny from 1893 on, inspired by Far Eastern models. Yet already in Vétheuil, the painter had pursued his hobby of gardening with enthusiasm and had depicted his garden in a number of ambitious compositions. This painting is one of a group of seven garden pictures he made in 1881 and is the only variation in the series executed in a horizontal format. The thick ground cover, closely cropped composition, and bright, glowing colors convey the impression of a carpet-like weave. The tree featured prominently in the left foreground as well as the broad expanse of branches and the garden poles function as disconcerting barriers to the viewer’s gaze. They are counteracted by the motif of the garden path, which leads the eye from the right foreground into the center of the composition. Almost exactly in the center of the painting, a horizontal row of six plant containers marks the first terrace level of the elaborately planted slope.
Monet also integrated the blue and white ceramic vessels into his 1881 painting The Artist’s Garden at Vétheuil (National Gallery of Art, Washington, D. C.), where they line the lower portion of the path as containers for red gladiolas; the comparison with this vertical image, with its open pictorial structure, makes the spatial arrangement of Monet’s garden more easily comprehensible. Even when the artist adopted a pictorial formula radically different from the classical rules of landscape composition, he rendered his motifs with topographical accuracy.
In the four-volume catalogue raisonné of Monet’s paintings compiled by Daniel Wildenstein, The Garden at Vétheuil is listed as no. 666 (vol. 2, p. 251). The picture was acquired in 1901 by the Berlin art dealer Paul Cassirer, who was one of the most ardent supporters of French Impressionism and who procured numerous important works for German museums and private collections in the early 20th century.
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