ESSAY: A Lost Garden Reborn

By Christopher S. Gerlach

An Artist’s Visit to Claude Monet’s Garden
at Giverny in 1981, told from 1998

      Paintings are, for me, the wink of an eye, a single seeing; a place, light, sunset, flow of water, the glint on a seagull's wing far below a windswept cliff.  These moments, of seeing, I learned from life and my own vision, and also from certain masters that my artist's heart was drawn to, like a magic magnet; and Claude Monet, the burly, surly, wild, wonderful painter's painter, who launched into his art almost a century and a half ago, and lingered in a forgotten twilight into our own, he was such a mentor, a fellow seeker, to me.  There is a rough generous yet tender way his colors, his light spilling paintings light a rainbow for me every time.  I held on to this attachment all the way through my art schooling, when modern was ABSTRACT, and nobody painted "things" or reality anymore.  "You are so out of it, Chris," some of the other students, teachers, and later the critics, said.  I didn't pay much attention, but then I wasn't paying much attention to anyone.  Just sort of cruising on, eyes half focused, and generally rather remote, but it worked for me.  Finally complete with the training and study I had set myself, I made a beeline back to the USA, where people drove on the wrong side of the street, and I started doing this work that some call being an artist; for me it meant making paintings, living in a little village on the beach outside San Francisco, and finding some sort of way to keep hidden from the outside world in my own creations of light and paint.

        I had returned from three years of wonderful study in England, at the remarkable Ruskin School of Drawing at Oxford, to begin my own work as a landscape painter in the last days of 1979.  America at that time was still empty of realism in contemporary art, and I worked in my little corner of things, following my own vision more stubbornly than inspired.  By chance, the small oceanside village I settled in just north of San Francisco was also home to a benefactor of Versailles and a friend of the Gerald Van Der Kemps; Gerald was the former Director of Versailles.  My friend bought a painting of mine in my first show stateside, and suggested the possibility of my visiting Giverny.
 
         In this time, after I had my first show, and my first pan by the critics, they called me a neo-post impressionist, I had a really heaven sent chance to visit the final hideout of the greatest impressionist of them all, Monet.
 
       It was like being in a double exposure, a picture of a picture, a movie of a movie, for the paintings were so familiar to me, and the stories of this man and his place... and yet seeing is much more than believing; it is living alongside, and within life.  I think I had a hint then this was what art was for me, or would be: the real thing. 

       What I remember most clearly at first was seeing the water lily pool, in the early morning light; veils of mist rising into the light and birds singing everywhere.  The water held the reflections of the sunlit trees, for the summer sun had just risen.  It was cool, and smelling the air was like drinking perfume; hyacinth, wisteria, rose, lavender drifted on the air. 

       I was a painter, in a painter’s garden, and the colors and the shapes made sense to some hidden part of me that always sings with color and light.  I had come there to paint, in the garden of one of the greatest recent painters.  The garden had been reborn after a sleep of over fifty years.  And I am reborn, thinking back to this time, now almost twenty years ago for me. Awakenings and re-awakenings mingle with memories and a present sense of joy and hope and life.

Monet's Watergarden, Giverny: Dawn 24" x 30 " | Oil on Canvas   Monet's Watergarden, Giverny: Sunrise 24" x 30 " | Oil on Canvas   Monet's Watergarden, Giverny: Morning Light 24" x 30 " | Oil on Canvas   Monet's Watergarden, Giverny: Late Afternoon 24" x 30 " | Oil on Canvas   Monet's Watergarden, Giverny: Sunset 24" x 30 " | Oil on Canvas   Monet's Watergarden, Giverny: Moonlight 24" x 30 " | Oil on Canvas

 

        Claude Monet lived a determined and at times stormy life.  He was consumed by his work, his passion for light and color.  All his life, he pursued effects of sunrise, of full day, storms and sunsets; and dragging his brush through a jungle of color he placed each scene, each moment into pictures that are filled still with his passion and the light of life. A single figure in the snow, sun drenched light on the falling rising face of a great cathedral, green glinting groves, dapple wrapped summer rivers, boating, floating, sailing, all kinds of scenes, and he gave them all the rough, untamed vitality, the bravura, the vim, the incunabula like glow of art freed finally from the old cold frame. True, he had an edge, for the old world of wood, and cloth and canvas, of undeveloped countryside, and still new towns and cities had still not fallen into "modern" sameness and a sort of hostile reign over our lives.  And modern media, photographs, and other ways had not robbed art of the magical role of master impresario, bridegroom of beauty, and the window of appreciation.  Success came after long years of work, and with the success, he bought a home that was an old farmhouse in the little town of Giverny, about two hours by fast train from Paris to the west.  He lived at this house all the last part of his life, and found another passion to add and weave into his art, the art of gardening. 
 
        The house lay near the slope of a low range of hills north of the Seine River, and across the river meadows in his time, you could still see the river in the distance.  The house was long, painted a traditional pink which he kept, two storied and stood on enough land to plant and flourish as Monet’s garden.  He planted avenues, a central avenue or row of arbors and beds of flowers that led from the house down to a series of pools that he planted with water lilies.  All around this central feature were other beds and paths, each filled with particular flowers in different seasons.  Amid all this were fruit trees, and flowering trees, and around all wrapped the moist sunlit air of the river valley and France.

The Front Walk – Monet’s House: Giverny
Oil on Canvas  1980

        For all the years that he lived at Giverny, Monet kept adding to the garden.  He was remarried at the time, and Blanche, his second wife brought to his life her children and a household of servants.  This retreat became Monet’s world; and from it he drew inspiration for a number of series of incredible paintings; mosaics, tapestries, symphonies in color and movement and paint.  Among these late paintings were innumerable ones of the water lilies floating in the sky reflected in the water of the pools, in all lights and all times of day.

        Over time, he became so wrapped up in the water lily theme he conceived of a great work, perhaps his greatest work; a long figure eight surround, eight feet high and hundreds of feet long that eventually was hung in a special museum in Paris, the Orangerie, through the efforts of his good friend, Georges Clemmencau, the Prime Minister of France not too long after the turn of the century.  This immense work took many years, and was and still is a masterpiece of floating space, brilliant and at the same time pearly and magical mystery of color and light through color.  One of the amazing things about this project, which was carried out with the help of huge easels, and new specially designed studio and many helpers, was that during this he began to go blind.  For the blindness, from cataracts, at that time, doctors prescribed opium, and he grew opium poppies in his garden.  The effect of this potion made his color even more advanced and strong, and he kept working, having to stand almost right against the canvas to see at all.

        After his death in 1926, the house was neglected.  All the family moved away, and the house stood, with the furniture and art within untouched, for forty years.  One gardener who remained living in the village would trim the central allé once a year and keep it clear, but over time, the garden fell into disrepair and abandonment.  Art and taste had moved on as well, and Monet was regarded for many years as a fossil, and a lost and forgotten form of art, unwanted in the tide of abstraction and personal explosion that was much of Modern Art. 
 
        By chance and Destiny, Gerald Van Der Kemp, who had for many years been the curator of the vast palace of Versailles and his wife Florence visited the garden.  They were enchanted by the magic and mystery of the place.  A brief flurry of attention had occurred previously, in 1959, when Monet’s last son died in a car accident and the house had been visited by lawyers doing the Will and settling affairs.  They found over 700 paintings in the studios at Giverny, unknown, and abandoned; and this tide of brilliant paintings began to reach the world through the auctions at Christie's and Sotheby’s and into the collections of museums and collectors across the world.  So in a way, Monet came to life again, gradually and over time.
 
        When Gerald and Florence found the garden, he had just retired from his Director’s post of Versailles.  On an inspiration, they invited Lily Atchison Wallace, who with her husband had been the founders of Reader’s Digest to lunch in New York, and over lunch, she gave them a check for a very generous amount to begin the restoration of the gardens at Giverny.  It took many years, for by then all traces of the plantings, and much of the garden structure and the house were almost totally in ruins.  Furniture in the house was rotting, paintings by masters such as Degas and Pissaro, Monet’s friends and fellow artists, had mushrooms growing out of them, hanging on mold streaked walls.
 
        The restoration and research was finally completed in the late 1970’s and the actual work of rebuilding and replanting begun. 

Gerlach at Giverny  1979

       I had visited the area on a pilgrimage of sorts from Paris in 1979, and saw then the structure of the arbors, and actually walked around the pools, and saw the outside of the house from the road; but there were no plants then, it was winter, and all was bare.  I had no idea that another stroke of destiny would bring me back to paint there myself three years later.
 
     The visit was a mix between a dream and a dance to music I felt deep in my heart.  I am, I suppose, many things as well as an artist; my paintings were for a long time the only way I had of saying my being.  To reach this place of my painting and vision, I had to go back 100 years to the days of the Impressionists; for the way they saw is the way I see; and the colors and light that they pursued, I still love and paint.  Monet was probably the primary influence on me, and to be there, in his garden, many years later, in 1980, as this story started out, was deep for me, and a very special time.  I got off the train, and actually walked to the village where the house and garden were.  It was spring, France, greenest of green growing places, was sunshine, and pale blue sky, filled with dancing clouds, and the flowers, flowers everywhere; every time I go to France, I remember first and last, the flowers. 
 
        I stayed in a small aubnerge or inn in the village, which was really just a collection of houses, an few shops and the main road from to Paris.  You can whisk by on the fast train, along the railroad down by the river, and Giverny would be gone in a instant.  I spent ten days there, and painted in the gardens in all lights and all times of day; wrapped in the past, the present and leaning then, I see now, into this future moment which is now here, where my own art has grown and opened with me; like one of the beautiful flowers of the water lilies; one moment a bud, then a blossom hanging between air and water and filled with light and incredible color.  As I was traveling rough in those days, I could take only small canvases with me; and easel and paints and a few clothes.  When I got back to San Francisco, I began unwinding and weaving the memories, and pictures and paintings began to be. Soon the little redwood house perched amid the eucalyptus groves above the bay in Sausalito was filled with the light and colors of Monet’s Giverny.  One painting after another came, almost demanding life, form and to be.
 
 I worked all that time I was at Giverny with a sense of connection and unity with Monet; at times I felt that I could see him, bulky figure with old tweeds, a battered hat, huge white beard and a smelly pipe peering out from behind the arbors, half hidden in the dusk or in early dawn.  My easel was often right at the water’s edge of the pool, early so as to not disturb the visitors of the day, and to also catch the fleeting and magical early tints of light that cascaded through the willow trees above the water’s face.  As I worked, the sounds of the garden, the birds, even my own breathing slipped away, and I was one with my brush, the next color, the next stroke, until the painting was, in it’s own time, done.  The arbors of the garden lined a central avenue, which ended in the lily pool at the bottom of the gentle hill slope, beyond through gates were water meadows, willows, and finally the long, gleaming, glistening every flowing dancing river, the Seine, on her way to the sea.  Water seemed everywhere, even in the air, for wonderful mists rose in the dawn, and fell again at dusk.  All edges were softened, you walked softly, spoke softly, lived gently, and will a flowing sense of joyful drowsiness; not needing to hurry, just enjoy.  The garden beds were kept filled by Monsieur Vallier, a veteran master gardener, and evidently, in Monet's time, the same parade of colors, reds, yellows, oranges, gleaming purple iris, cascades of brilliantine alabaster wisteria, honeysuckle, filled the garden with living versions of the piles of pigment on Monet's palette.  In such a living painting, I began to paint, feeling almost like I was trying my own wings, new fledged, in a sky that an eagle had flown; feeling safe to try, for his works were all with us to see.  You see, Monet painted with a mastery born of deep knowing, tremendous experience; and these had led to his own kind of freedom, looseness; knowing just how to hint, and suggest, and deftly tenderly coax belief from our eyes, with not a single extra or unneeded stroke or word.

The Waterlily Garden – Late Afternoon
Oil on Canvas 1980

        It was this subtlety that it was to take so long, in so many different lessons, for me to even see the need for.  But there, wrapped in the amber light, the flowing shades of light and shadow, and above all the glory and secret paradise of the waterlily pond, the water garden, I felt wrapped in this knowing with no effort.
 
      I remember the colors of the house, pink and green on the outside, and inside, the light filled yellow dinning room with the matching purple and yellow china.  The house was a reflection of the colors from the garden, and fresh flowers daily placed around seemed to bring the garden in with them.  The mixture and flow of life, home, work, art and the beauty of the garden and the countryside wove a pattern that still comes as I write these words.  Art released from museums, and frames and limits maybe can be part of all we are and do, artful living, gentle touch, mindful, and grateful caring.
 
    The stories of Monet, his life there and memories of those times were all around the village; I got to know Monet’s grandson, who still lived in the village, and remember a special evening having dinner with him and his partner, and a walk home to my inn with them, in the moonlight down lanes filled with the night scent of honeysuckle and jasmine and the sound, which I had never heard before, of nightingales singing from the woods as we passed along.   I began to understand then, that time and the most wonderful blessings of peace and beauty wait for us, unseen, along our path, and when we can see them, they appear.  The memory of this moonlight walk, that moment, now many many years ago, it is here, as I write.  As this lei of wonders and understandings started to grow, I can finger it, and say, yes, this one, this was that walk; the feel of the rough French road, the wet smell of the sleeping woodlands, the fall, like golden jewels of living sound, of the limpid, liquid, magical song of those nightingales, and over all the slender new moon and the soft glowing stars. 
 
        Time seemed to be quite meaningless there in that place, with the beautifully recreated gardens all around.  At the time the establishment was quite new; since, I have heard that many thousands, maybe more, visit there each year during the season.  The flowers and gardens grow more lovely, full, and deep in every art photograph book, calendar and print I see of Giverny in bookstores and malls and friends’ homes. I wonder sometimes what my own art would be now if I hadn’t gone and been there for that time.  Sometimes I wonder if some sort of passage of energy and life force was waiting for me there, on the Japanese bridges under the wisteria, along the alleys of flowering blossoms, waiting to enter and merge with my vision, and being.  I do not know, but when I close my eyes, I can still see the pools, wrapped in lavender and light, just a footstep away from Monet and his vision, a vision of the garden of Eden here today, and of the garden of delight in each of us.  I will always be grateful to the Van der Kemps, to Mrs. Wallace, and to my friend for this visit to what may have been a missing part of myself, waiting to come home. 
 
        I remember especially stretching three large canvases, eight feel tall, without knowing what they were to be.  In one morning, the water lily pool appeared, flowers and lily pads floating in an azure heaven, my vision to be sure, but also shared with the man who had pursued these fragile beauties in his own garden  an ocean and half a century away.  Another series of mine was the water garden, as it appeared at dawn, and on through the day.  Each picture a window in time and timelessness.  I have looked back to this time as one of effortless joy, and a flow beyond and within me and my art; a touchstone for times of questioning now and to come.  Each moment of our lives is informed, created by all our past, and flows seamlessly into our unknown future... moving, flowing, slipping away and past, never to return. Yet, each of my paintings holds a hint for me, not only of how I see and paint is changing and growing, but also how life was then, at that single moment. And perhaps, in time, these windows may, perhaps indeed will invite others to see what I see, feel what was “that” single instant, fleeting, unique, that made up and makes up each precious day... a gift, as Monet so surely knew, there always for us all.

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ESSAYS: Ruskin School of Drawing & Fine Arts | Giverny

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All Text and Images Copyright © 2004-2013 Christopher Gerlach
 
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