Two Garden Artists: Claude Monet and Santiago Rusinol

Flower gardens are loved around the world. I think it would be interesting to gardeners to compare two Flower artists who chose gardens as the subject for their paintings.  These artists both lived in the same time in Europe.  One became famous, as far as the number of popular current reproductions, commercial success, the posters and designs that continue to celebrate Monet flowers.  The other, lesser known Spanish painter, Rusinol, I find his work intriguing, because he takes flowers and makes gardens into something symbolic, of mystery, moody and beauty.  His colors are almost supersaturated colors.  His gardens look very modern.

Claude Monet Blues and the Bees

In very rare instances, people can see into the ultra-violet range. Usually, it’s after a lens injury or cataract surgery. This condition is called aphakia. People with aphakia see a “near” UV light. It is perceived as a whitish-blue or whitish-violet color. The French impressionist painter Claude Monet had this condition after cataract surgery. Before the surgery, his cataracts were so bad that his color range was limited to red and orange. After the surgery his paintings included deep purple and blue hues.

When Monet painted clouds, he used blues and purples instead of black and white or grays.  His paintings, the Water Lillies is water that is mostly blues and violet range.

Monet was interested in studying color and light.  He broke up flowers into bits of dashes of color which you have to stand away from to see sometimes the lilies in water and reflected flowers in water. Rusinol flowers are representational, realism but there is something.

Monet the Gardener

Monet, the French Impressionist Painter, painted flowers and gardens. Monet was also a passionate home gardener. Water Lilies, his most famous work, was a whole lifetime of painting his home garden, painted in different seasons.  Monet was an active gardener in Givenchy, France.  He worked in his garden. He planned all the time, diverting water, building bridges, changing his gardens. He painted his children on a path of tall summer flowers.  He painted a field of red poppies.  He painted other “plein air” outdoor scenes, like railroad stations and steam. This artist mostly changed the way people saw flowers and gardens then and now.

 

 

 

 

 

A connection with the bees and Monet.  His eyes saw blues and blue purples instead of gray, because of an eye condition “aphakia.”  Bees see more of blues and ultraviolet range of flowers.  Even yellow flowers have blue haloes or targets to the pollen in the center of the flower heads.

Santiago Rusinol.  He painted public gardens and Spanish gardens.

Santiago Rusinol, a Spanish painter who lived in Europe, during French Impressionism movement.  Rusinol lived in France at the same time of Monet painted gardens, but Rusinol was not a gardener.  He was interested in symbolism of flowers in gardens.  Part of the Symbolism movement in Paris, France,  he painted formal gardens and his home country of Spain, the terraced sunny gardens.  He chose flowers, trees and gardens for subjects of paintings.  He also was a portrait painter.