[Book-a-Leafing] Renoir’s Garden

(Fell. Frances Lincoln 1991)

Listening to: The Cinematic Orchestra, Les Ailes Pourpres (BSO)

{Versión en español, aquí}

When colours are alive, we paint gardens.

Many landscape gardeners might agree with the sentiment, portraying themselves as artists whose paint tubes are full of seeds, shrubs and trees, eager to enrich the blank canvas of soil with texture and colour. Others, however, will frown upon such a comparison, finding fault with it for being too limiting, or perhaps too generous.

The relationship between art and gardens is a rather thorny issue. To some, gardening is an art form; to others, the two things aren’t remotely alike. I personally harbour no doubts on the subject: a garden can be a work of art. Perhaps not every garden is one, just as not every sketchy drawing may deserve to be called “a masterpiece”. But some gardens are doubtlessly works of art.

In retrospect, the movement that helped the most to enthrone gardens as artistic subjects worthy of admiration and respect might have been Impressionism, with Claude Monet’s famous statement referring to Giverny as his “most beautiful work of art”.

‘Summer Landscape’ (1875), by Pierre-Auguste Renoir.

The fascination that gardens exerted on many of the Impressionists was strong.

The stories about these relationships have been explored in countless ways, whether in books, exhibitions, or even films; indeed, the names of some of its characters are rather famous, even among people who aren’t particularly well-versed in the history of painting. Such is the case with Monet himself, the “prince” of the Impressionist team, the main character —albeit rather by accident, not by his own design— in the whole show.

Before we go on, I’d like to make something clear: I love reading, seeing, researching about Monet. In the BBC show The Impressionists, Claude was my favourite. We all love Monet, we are entranced by his Nymphéas, his wisterias, the agapanthus, the poppy fields, the rose-covered cottages, and all the rest. I even like the flowers he didn’t paint, of all things.

However, I’m even more attracted to the stories that posterity, with her mysterious laws, has deemed less worthy of interest, and thus forgets to dust and polish as often —or at all. Just as I enjoy talking about the flowers nobody talks about, I feel drawn to shine a light on those gardens to which time has paid little attention. I am lured in by the very dimness they live in, by the promise that I shall find some delightful surprise that’s still a secret known by just a few of us. The intellectual equivalent of discovering something off the beaten track.