Flower power: RA examines the importance of gardens to Monet and his contemporaries
This article originally appeared on Culture24.
The Royal Academy will be blasting the icy tendrils of January away with a colourful paean to the art of garden painting
Claude Monet, Nympheas (Waterlilies) (1914-15). Oil on canvas© Portland Art Museum, Oregon. Museum Purchase: Helen Thurston Ayer Fund, 59.16. Photo: Portland Art Museum, Portland, OregonIt's apt, then, that there are 35 Monets in the Royal Academy's major exhibition for the New Year, which examines the role of gardens in the work of late nineteenth and early twentieth century artists.
Painting the Modern Garden: Monet to Matisse will open at the Burlington Gardens gallery on January 30, 2016 and will bring together over 120 pieces from public and private collections across the USA and Europe.
As well as the crowd-pleasing haul of Monet's, other pieces in the colourful show will include Impressionist, Post-impressionist and Avant-Garde works by luminaries such as Edouard Manet, Mary Cassatt, Berthe Morisot, Paul Cézanne, John Singer Sargent, Henri Matisse, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Vincent van Gogh, Gustav Klimt and Edouard Vuillard.
All of them artists with an expert eye for for flowers and foliage.
And for green fingered visitors who want to delve a little deeper, the exhibition will be supported by a variety of documentary materials including horticultural books and journals, receipts for plant purchases and excerpts from letters.
Some of the works due to be featured in the exhibition:
Auguste Renoir, Monet Painting in His Garden at Argenteuil (1873). Oil on canvas © Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT. Bequest of Anne Parrish Titzell, 1957.614 Photo: Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT
Henri Matisse, The Rose Marble Table, Issy-les-Moulineaux (spring-summer 1917). Oil on canvas© The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Mrs. Simon Guggenheim Fund, 1956 Photo: (2015) Digital image, The Museum of Modern Art, New York/Scala, Florence / Succession H. Matisse/ DACS 2015
Claude Monet, Lady in the Garden (1867). Oil on canvas© The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg. Photo: The State Hermitage Museum. Photography: Vladimir Terebenin
Wassily Kandinsky, Murnau The Garden II (1910). Oil on cardboard© Merzbacher Kunststiftung Photo: Merzbacher Kunststiftung
Joaquin Sorolla, Louis Comfort Tiffany (1911). Oil on canvas© On loan from the Hispanic Society of America, New York, NY. Photo: Courtesy of The Hispanic Society of America, New York
Pierre Bonnard, Resting in the Garden (Sieste au jardin) (1914). Oil on canvas© The National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, Oslo. Photo: Nasjonalmuseet for kunst, arkitektur og design/The National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design / ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2015- Painting the Modern Garden: Monet to Matisse will be at the Royal Academy from January 30 - April 20 2016
