Not many of us in the East are aware of the significance of the village of Giverny in France and its impact on the art world from 1885 to 1915. Located in the Seine River valley, which is 40 miles northwest of Paris, the picturesque village, was once home to hundreds of big artists, including French Impressionist, Claude Monet.

According to Thomas Bates, a writer in Berkeley, California, Giverny was significant on the art scene for it was home to famous artists who gathered to paint outdoors and transformed the village into an impressionist artists’ colony.

Weather conditions changed rapidly in Giverny. A grey overcast sky in the morning with a burst of rain could be followed by a period of brilliant sunshine. These quick and unpredictable transitions allowed for variations in light in a single day. The rapid change of rain, cloud and sun often exasperated the artists who wanted to paint outdoors. But the perseverant artists produced some of the most beloved paintings the world has ever known from here. A personal favourite, Monet’s ‘Water Lilies’, was painted in Giverny.

In 1883, Monet moved from the north-west of Paris to Giverny with his extended step-family, where he lived for over 40 years, until his death in 1926. When he arrived, Giverny had 300 inhabitants, but in a few years, hundreds of young artists moved to make Giverny their home. However, only a handful of artists really achieved any sort of fame there.

Monet came to the village by chance, attracted by the Normandy countryside. He had assured his dealer that he was certain to create masterpieces in Giverny as he planned to make the village a permanent abode for himself and his family. He initially rented and later purchased a large house from a wealthy landowner and rooted his extended ‘complex’ family there, which included his companion, Alice Hoschede – wife of friend and patron Ernest Hoschede – Alice’s six children; and his two sons Jean and Michel. His own wife Camille had died in 1879.
It was in Giverny that Monet produced his famous painting series – the ‘Haystacks’, ‘Poplars’, ‘Cathedrals’ and ‘Morning by the Seine’. During his first years in Giverny, Monet  painted outdoors. He found inspiration in the numerous flowering fields, located just outside the village. The ‘Poppy Field’ was one such work. It seemed like it was done rapidly to capture a single moment of the day. From 1900, even though he picked foreign locations like Venice and London for his paintings, he came home to Giverny to complete them. 

In the 1880s and 1890s, he consolidated not only his artistic and financial fortunes, but also his domestic life. He was the domineering head of both the Monet-Hoschede families and also began intensive development of his property.

Monet withdrew himself to the boundaries of his garden which he did not share with any of the other artists in the village. His work in his garden and the response to his paintings of it, popularised gardening in 1900 and several magazines featured it on their glossy pages.

Adjacent to Monet’s property was a small pond which he acquired in 1893, where he created a water garden with an arched bridge in the Japanese style. In 1900, he exhibited a series of 10 canvases of the pond, showing a single subject in differing light conditions. He worked on similar series representing poplars, haystacks and the façade of Rouen Cathedral during the same period. The simple design of this painting with the close-up view of the bridge was repeated in several other canvases.

While Impressionism became the dominant aesthetic style among the inhabitants of Giverny, a variety of techniques and styles could also be found. But the actual reason Giverny came into being, was to avoid the over-crowded, over-painted regions of France.

However, Giverny was not an avante-garde settlement, with daring rule-breaking artists. Instead Giverny provided a safe and comfortable haven for mostly American artists. Artist Paul Cezanne stayed three weeks at the famous Hotel Baudy which was the hub of all socialising in the town. However, he spent his time painting or meeting with Monet. His famous ‘Winter Landscape near Paris’ (1894) was done in Giverny.
What happened with so many artists congregating at one spot was that a similar artistic style called the ‘Giverny trick’ developed.

Most artists were influenced by Monet the ‘resident master’ and colour  formed the key characteristic of paintings which were produced in Giverny.

The possibility that numerous artists in Giverny used similar palettes pointed to a common ‘trick’ used in the village.

In fact, John Breck who worked to imitate Monets 1891 series of ‘Haystacks’ did not copy the masters methods but tried to focus on Monet’s play on changing shadows and colours. The French master did draw a group of American artists to Giverny, but the colony developed completely independent of him, though they did experiment with Impressionism.

It was from the 1900s that Monet’s garden paintings began to take on a more impressionistic, formless style. The ‘Water Lilies’ is a clear example of this. It was a fragment of his garden but the painting could have been done anywhere. This, many art historians believe, could have been because he was avoiding imitiation, identification and rivalry from this colony of artists who seem to overpower Monet and drove him into seclusion in Giverny.