Giverny

I went to the Art Institute of Chicago on Monday. Looking at this picture rekindled all of my desires to go to Giverny.

When I started high school, I wanted to go to college and major in art history, and imagined that one day I would become a Monet scholar. I forced my dad to buy me the book Linnea in Monet’s Garden. I would go to the Art Institute of Chicago and gaze at Monet’s haystack paintings until well past the time people would start saying, “Geez, how many paintings of hay can a guy do?” I had Monet calendars, journals, postcards, and a huge framed print (which still hangs on my bedroom wall). Even though I realized that there would probably never be a huge job market for art history majors, I always stayed interested in the subject, and wrote a final paper for an art history class on a painting Monet had done before he became MONET.

That class invoked a new love for Pop Art in me, and Roy Lichtenstein surpassed Monet as my favorite painter, I would still love to go to Giverny and see Monet’s garden and his little Japanese bridge and visit all the places Linnea visited.

It’s very tranquil despite the large number of visitors. I definitely recommend walking through the village after seeing Monet’s house and gardens, and going to see his grave.

its very beautiful

The gardens are breath taking! The first view of Monet’s house and gardens were amazing. It was definately an art historians dream to see where he painted, walk over the bridge, and admire the infamous waterlillies.

I would love to be immersed in beauty…of color, flowers, scents, landscape…

So beautiful I’ve been to Monet’s house really good trip you see all paintings in real, espacially the bridge!

The gardens are truly lovely, esp. when the waterlilies are flowering. Easy day trip from Paris on the train.

My favorite thing about Giverny besides the yellow kitchen in Monet’s house and flowers infinite and lilly pads with crowded onlookers snapping eager and beloved photos, was the amount of people I saw drawing and painting. I realize that maybe folks should find more places to draw and paint than just a legendary artist’s retreat, and I realize most people probably expected solitude, but I felt captivated by a different sort of pilgrimage I was sharing with fellow art lovers. I especially loved the class of small children I saw drawing. I joined the bandwagon, the communion of would-be artists painting. After-all I too had brought my sketchbooks and my watercolors. I too snapped a photo of a lilly pad.

Lovely house and garden, such a priviledge to be able to be part of his life if only for just a few minutes.