In the Gardens of Impressionism

by Clare A.P. Willsdon

A colorful excursion through the French Impressionists’ gardens, from Courbet and Degas to Renoir and Manet

In the Gardens of Impressionism fully explores―from Manet’s Tuileries to Monet’s Giverny―with dazzling visual accompaniment, the Impressionist love affair with the new thinking about garden and landscape design that swept nineteenth-century France.

Author Clare Willsdon discusses the artists’ complementary roles as painters and as gardeners, and offers exciting new interpretations of their art, informed by source material such as popular gardening manuals of the day. She also looks at the garden, public or private, as a new kind of space with political undertones, and relates it to the Impressionists’ adoption of plein-air techniques. In her analysis of specific works, their historical and horticultural context is presented in a clear, informative, and engaging manner including musings from such literary figures as Baudelaire, Duranty, Daudet, and Zola. Lively discussion of the artists’ private lives gives the text another satisfying perspective. 300+ illustrations

Genres: Nonfiction

240 pages, Paperback

First published November 2, 2004

Reviews

[Ambrose Miles · Rating 5 out of 5]

Having spent a lot of time with Impressionism and impressionists, I’d say Ms. Willsdon covered her subject throughly. There’s a lot more here than I could possibly take in at 100%, so give me 4 stars for something less than wonderful. (Not that this has anything to do with the book, but being something less than wonderful is a line from a Thomas “Fats” Waller song.)

[Juliano · Rating 4 out of 5]

“If my own introduction to the magic of making things grow was as a child, when my parents gave me a corner of their garden for my own, it is their perceptive insights which, in turn, have enriched my understanding of the ‘gardens of Impressionism’, […] While the book is dedicated to them, I hope it will enable many others also to share my joys of discovery in opening the gates and following the paths of the ‘gardens of Impressionism’.” Clare A. P. Willsdon’s art history monograph, In the Gardens of Impressionism, is a gorgeous look at a very specific aspect of a very specific art movement. With chapters on flowers, horticulture, private gardens, Parisian bouquet, sunshine and shadows and sanctuary, social gardens, working gardens, Monet, and the fruits of the gardens, Willsdon draws on a range of artists and their various contexts, personal, political, and literary, to explore what the garden meant then, and might mean now. “Gardens are traditionally reinventions of ‘primal’ forms of nature which serve as subliminal reminders of a world before mankind — an unsullied Eden or a lost paradise or Golden Age — and as such they already carry meanings and associations, even before their interpretation by Impressionist or other artists. As nature shaped and trained by human hand, gardens are themselves works of art, however rudimentary”. Jean-François Bony, Gustave Courbet, Simon Saint-Jean, Edgar Degas, Edouard Manet, Claude Monet, Berthe Morisot, John Singer Sargent all feature (among others — Bazille, Pissarro, MacMonnies, Frieseke, Renoir, Guillaumin), their works and readings of them, all in concert with one another, as “Idea, image and invention all went hand in hand”.

[Joan · Rating 3 out of 5]

good but not great; enjoyed as I've visited most of the gardens and have seen many of the paintings, so lovely to revisit. but if not, there are better books on the paintings and the gardens.