CLAUDE MONET

This canvas—one of Claude Monet’s first attempts to capture his garden in paint—derives its composition and vivid hues from the Japanese prints he collected. It marks the beginning of the artist’s thirty-year fascination with the colors of his flowers and plants.

Monet expanded the gardens surrounding his home at Giverny, in northern France, after seeing a Japanese garden and water-lily display at the 1889 world’s fair in Paris. The arched bridge he placed over a new pond may have been suggested by a Japanese gardener (as yet unidentified) who visited him when he was planning the site.