1919-1920

Oil on canvas

100x300cm

«©MuséeMarmottan Monet,

Académie des beaux-arts, Paris »

It was Monet himself who chose the plants to decorate his garden in Giverny. They therefore embodied his personal vision of the ideal garden. In 1905, he had an arch built over the Japanese bridge spanning the water-lily pond. From this hung wisteria imported from China and Japan, falling in “white and mauve bunches, a light mauve that seems to have been painted in watercolor”.

In 1919 and 1920, Monet painted several canvases of this scene, some of them no doubt to decorate the small house built in the garden of the Hôtel Biron, which had opened as the Musée Rodin in 1919. This project was abandoned in 1921 in order to develop the Orangerie des Tuileries. The Musée Marmottan Monet has two canvases in the same format featuring wisteria. They show garlands of hanging flowers, reaching across from one upper edge of the canvas to the other, falling and floating in a delicate atmosphere of lilac hues.