Here’s another mini-gallery of paintings of a favorite theme for our Art Circle. For gardens have inspired numerous artists especially Impressionists, whether from France such as Renoir and Monet or the United States such as Childe Hassam, William Merritt Chase and John Singer Sargent. So enjoy an extended walk through these visionary works of summer! And your individual comments and ideas are always welcome.
The soul cannot thrive in the absence of a garden.
If you don’t want a paradise, you are not human;
and if you are not human, you don’t have a soul.
Sir Thomas More
Pierre Auguste-Renoir, Woman in the Garden, 1873, oil on canvas, Private Collection
Nothing in the whole world is of interest to me but my painting and my flowers.
Claude Monet
Claude Monet, Rounded Flower Bed, 1876, oil on canvas, Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, Michigan
Gardening is the purest of human pleasures.
Sir Francis Bacon
Gustave Caillebotte, Roses in the Garden at Petit Gennevilliers, c. 1886, oil on canvas, Private Collection
Gardens are not made by singing “Oh how beautiful!” And sitting in the shade.
Rudyard Kipling
William Merritt Chase, The Nursery, 1890, oil on canvas, Private Collection
Take the poppy seed for instance: it lies in your palm, the merest atom of matter, hardly visible, a speck, a pin’s point in bulk, but within it imprisoned a spirit of beauty ineffable, which will it break its bonds and emerge from the dark ground and blossom in a splendor so dazzling as to baffle all powers of description.
Celia Thaxter, An Island Garden
Childe Hassam, Celia Thaxter’s Garden, Isle of Shoals, 1890, oil on canvas, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
As I walk among the flowers, I find myself talking to them, reasoning and remonstrating with them, and adoring them, as if they were human beings.
Celia Thaxter, An Island Garden
Childe Hassam, In the Garden (Celia Thaxter), 1892, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.
If you look the right way, you can see the whole world is a garden.
Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden
John Singer Sargent, Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose, 1885, oil on canvas, Tate Britain, London, UK
