Claude Monet : “The Artist’s Garden at Vetheuil” (1880)

A series of blue and white vases, tinted by the reflected light of their surroundings, direct the eye to the focal point of The Artist’s Garden at Vétheuil; Monet’s young son, Michel, who would one day inherit his estate at Giverny and will it to the Académie des Beaux-Arts. Pictured at the age of two, or thereabouts, he is dwarfed by rows of tall sunflowers that must have appeared to him as a gold and emerald forest.

According to the National Gallery in Washington, this work was completed at a point in Monet’s life when he “had become increasingly interested in the painted surface itself and less concerned with capturing a spontaneous effect of light and atmosphere. The very composition of this painting, with its high horizon, traps our eye in the canvas — even the path is blocked in the distance by the rising steps. We are forced back to the surface, where the paint is textured and heavily layered. At close range, these brushstrokes, though still inspired by nature, seem less descriptive than decorative.”