My university art history classes filled my mind with inspiration and my heart with the greatest desire to travel the world and see all that great art in person. At the top of my list was the great city of Paris with all its wonders. One day, I got to go. I went to Paris. Old Paris was impressive, with the L’ouvre and Tour de Eiffel, and new Paris was expansive with all of the commotion, traffic and industry of contemporary living. I loved old Paris so very much, and I will surely go back, but the great focal point of my visit was actually 76 kilometers outside of the big city in the quietest little village.
The contrast of the French countryside to the big city is like night and day. It is colorful, quaint and quiet in its simplicity. For our special visit, we hired a tour guide to get us out of the bustle of Paris and take us more personally to our small-town destination. No trains, no large buses, no noise, just a journey led by a thoughtful young tour guide with a love for France so deep in her heart, it spilled over and inspired all of us. Clemens took a special interest in our love for art history and stopped frequently to talk about her own family memories and community traditions. We moseyed up the narrow country road to a spectacular art village, Claude Monet’s art village in the amazing Giverny, France. First surprise stop, Claude Monet’s burial site behind a quaint church on the way into town.
Monet, the famous French Impressionist painter, put Giverny on the map with his beautiful and plentiful garden paintings. They are lush an beautiful and difficult to describe in words.
Giverny is a magical place. There is something special about the green trimmed windows and matching painted doors on every building that creates a sense of community and history. The fantastic Quiche Lorraine from Las Nympheas restaurant, across the street from the Monet house, is also an amazing part of the experience. But none of that delicious prelude prepares you for walking through the last green gate of the ordinary world and entering into the exquisite gardens where Monet tended his plants and painted so many water lily paintings.
The Monet Gardens are one of the most sublime places on earth and they really do take your breath away. I have to pause here for a moment, because my words seem clumsy as they cannot adequately describe such a lovely place. If one could imagine the most beautiful place on earth, multiply it times 1000, even then it would not compare to the beauty of Monet’s gardens. Every angle is breathtaking, every scene another stunning composition with every shade of green textured plant exploding with flowers in unimaginable colors. All of this amazing garden is growing naturally around the lily ponds with the quaint curved bridges so often recorded in Monet’s paintings. No wonder he found endless inspiration in his lovely gardens to eventually produce hundreds of paintings over a span of 30 years.
I spent just a few hours in the gardens with my favorite people talking about my favorite subject and even taking some photos, but mostly I spent time pausing to just see, really see all that beauty so I could absorb it all and take it with me. It was magnificent. I was altered by this most exquisite experience and will carry it with me forever.
The garden visit was made even more amazing, a few days later, when we visited the great Paris Musée de l’Orangerie and saw the famous curved Monet water lily paintings. The paintings themselves inspired the architecture of the unique oval museum built just for the Monet-designed curved paintings. The building is magnificent alone, but the artwork is so impressive, you must sit and stare at it for a long moment of reflection.
As an old art teacher, I watched in awe as my niece, a young student of art, studied the large paintings so closely, so intently, as if to almost listen to the testimonies of those unique brushstrokes from that great master. I still imagine today her nose pressed up against those expansive paintings, as she studied their every detail. She did not actually touch the paintings of course, as she holds art far more sacred than that, but it was the emotion, the intense study that has left that vision upon my mind. It was in that moment that I understood the profound effects of art on all of us, not just the lovely subject, but the colorful brushstrokes, the deliberate rough marks, the surprising color choices and the obvious optical illusions none of it lost on the keen eye of a 12-year-old girl.
That moment, that day, in that museum was art to me and the very reason I knew I had to travel to France and have those monumental experiences. So many years later, I am still amazed at the effects of those gardens and paintings and how they have played on my memory, my art and my life. I have been to Giverny, France and it will always be a part of me.