Arguably the most important painter of gardens in the history of art, Monet was also an avid horticulturist who cultivated gardens wherever he lived. As early as the 1860s a symbiotic relationship developed between his twin passions for gardening and painting, a relationship that can be traced from his early days at Sainte-Adresse to his final years at Giverny. “Gardening was something I learned in my youth when I was unhappy,” he remarked. “I perhaps owe it to flowers that I became a painter.”
Painting the Modern Garden: Monet to Matisse was on view at the Cleveland Museum of Art in 2016, showing paintings by masters such as Édouard Manet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Paul Cézanne, John Singer Sargent, Joaquín Sorolla, Vincent van Gogh, Edvard Munch, Wassily Kandinsky, Emil Nolde, Pierre Bonnard and Henri Matisse.