Many tours of Paris include a visit to Giverny, the gorgeous small estate and gardens of the famed impressionist artist, Claude Monet. Back in his days there, he was a celebrated artist – a fame that came to him later in life.
In Monet’s earlier years he and his wife nearly died of starvation as they struggled to survive in a tiny garret in Paris. Yet never would he consider taking on some other occupation. He lived only to draw and paint. His first wife died (and he was both acclaimed and censored for painting his wife as she lay dead in their marital bed). Eventually he married again, and then finally he became an artist in favor. He’d made enough money to afford a lovely home and a staff to take care of this quiet, country piece of land on a narrow lane just north of Paris. Back then it was a ‘fur piece” to get there – now it takes about 45 minutes by car.
Over the years he expanded the gardens to include a piece of land that was across the road. Technically he owned it (so we learned on our tour) but nobody else built on theirs, but Monet did. The tour includes both sides of the road and you hardly realize that there IS a road in between. The townspeople must not have wanted to make waves, so they allowed his indiscretion of developing the garden. The road, in the photo at top is behind the ivy wall you can see about half way up. He dammed up a small pond (which is on the annexed garden) and planted flowers every which way. He painted nearly every day and everyone in the household left him alone when he was painting – it is what allowed them all to live there and be part of his large family. As long as he continued to paint and sell his paintings, the family lived in some level of French countryside splendor.
His gardeners kept the entire property thriving with seasonal flowers, built and planned along every path and wall to provide fodder for his paintbrush. The Monets entertained lavishly and often – there are cookbooks about the food they ate. Including the menus and recipes.
The bridge at left is quite famous in Monet-land. It’s in several of his paintings (Cherrie and Joan standing there in the middle).
Some of the trees, shrubs and flowers were labeled, but most of them were not. We guessed at some. I think one of the most interesting areas was the pond and in the middle of it there were very vocal frogs. I took a video, but am not very adept at the process of uploading it to my blog, so just trust me – it was very 
entertaining as the frogs called to each other from one lily pad to another and males protected their territory with skirmishes going on nearly every minute. Or, maybe it wasn’t male-male skirmishes, but male to female lovers’ calls.
As we meandered around the paths, we eventually made it into the main gardens in front of the house. This pathway you see at right is cordoned off so visitors can’t walk there (you had to walk around the outside edges), but it makes for a prettier picture, I think.
In the heart of summer, most likely the climbing plants and flowers completely cover those canopies.
Flowers, pretty pastel spring flowers, were in abundance, in small clumps, mixing in more than one color or type, as at left with pink tulips and whatever the little blue flowers were. Can’t remember, nor can I tell from the photos.
Eventually we ended up going into the front door of the house (straight ahead in the photo above. Docents (French speaking only, of course) were in every room to make sure nobody stepped out of line or touched things. Monet and his wife slept in separate bedrooms, and actually the house wasn’t as big as I thought. Perhaps there are other rooms in the house that we didn’t see, more rooms for guests.
I’ve read that once a week – I think it’s on the day the estate is closed to the public – it’s open to artists who wish to come and paint in Monet’s footsteps. I’ve never done plein air painting (meaning out in the open, in nature), though every summer here where I live in Southern California, there is a workshop and competition for plein air.
Having heard about and read (I own the original Monet cookbook) some about the Monet family feasts, I was very intrigued to see the stunningly beautiful dining room. The house itself has been left completely as it was when Monet lived there (well, they keep it up, obviously, because it’s a huge money-maker). I have no idea if Monet’s descendants are involved, or are even alive. I don’t think I’ve ever heard.
The photo at left, with the rowboats, was one of my favorite scenes at Giverny. Monet painted angles of that numerous times. If you go on the ‘net and look, you’ll find so many paintings of different places all over the estate. There’s something so peaceful about the rowboats, and the still pond, and the bamboo (I think) growing up behind them.
My Monet cookbook resides up in my office (meaning that it isn’t one I use much). I found that the recipes were kind of bland. Plain. And that’s not my style particularly, but the book is big, with lots of photographs of Giverny, and I have a hankering to look through the pages again, to remember my walk through the gardens, this view and that.
The Monet dining room is all in yellow, and it’s a very bright and cheerful room. Big. Because there were many extra chairs sitting around the edges, I think the table could accommodate more people if they needed to. The floors were beautiful. The furniture was all painted yellow. The floors that unique brick-red and white checkerboard. You can see the doorway into the kitchen beyond.
Loved the yellow and crimson tulips that were just in their final days of bloom. I wanted to cut off about a hundred and vase them in my kitchen.
The kitchen was so cool (in blue) and airy, with the gorgeous copper pots hanging around. I suspect the table you see in the foreground was the main work surface. I think the tile wall is Delft, and I found it interesting that they combined the blue-blue (like a marine blue) of the tiles and the turquoise trim color. To me they don’t go together at all. I’m sure Monet decided that color – very little was left to chance or to Mrs. Monet.
There is the cooking wall – with different Delft tiles surrounding the stove. And would you take a look at that stove? Like a gigantic Aga, but surely it was wood burning. But I don’t know that – just assuming that it was wood or coal burning. With so many different cubbyholes for heating, warming and baking.
Off to one side of the gardens was a very large gift shop, and although I tried to find some things I wanted there, the only thing I bought was a plastic shopping bag (that cost me about $3.00 U.S.) with one of Monet’s lily pad pond scenes on it. I take it to the grocery store and cart food into my kitchen. They had lots of Monet books – oodles of them, but I didn’t buy one.
There at left is Monet’s art studio. It was gigantic – by far the biggest room in the house. On the walls are painted replicas of his paintings, all stuck chock-a-block on ever surface. It was connected to the house, but down several stairs to get there. I’d have liked to really study the room more, but it was quite crowded, as you can see.
All of us really enjoyed the gardens – it was a lovely afternoon, the sun shone but it wasn’t too hot (this was early April). We were fortunate that we had no rain – we didn’t have rain at all on the trip.
hddonna
said on July 2nd, 2015:
What a beautiful day you had to enjoy Giverny! I’m glad you included pictures of the kitchen. That is an amazing stove. I remember seeing pictures of the tiles in a magazine article. I agree with you as to the color scheme. I doubt if I will ever get to France, but if I should make it, I will definitely include Giverny on my itinerary.
Thanks for sharing your impressions 🙂 and your lovely photos.