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Claude Monet - Monet's Garden at Giverny 1895

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From Bührle Foundation, Zurich:
Monet’s landscapes at Vétheuil constituted a transition to Neo-lmpressionism, but he himself did not proceed further in this direction, as did Pissarro for a number of years. Although he is considered the leader of the Impressionists, Monet had nothing to do with theoretical systems. His work, no matter how subject to transformations, always grew out of his sensibility, as he himself testified, not least in the series of pictures of haystacks, poplars and the paintings of the Cathedral of Rouen, in which the point was to seize and record the finest transformations of the light. In the spring of 1883 Monet established a new residence in Giverny, which he was not to leave again until his death, except for journeys. Finally relieved of his financial distress, he built up this country seat with a spacious garden, whose lavish blooms of irises, peonies, mallows, roses and wistaria again and again inspired him to paint. The human figure is assimilated in this chromatic kaleidoscope to become merely a schematic coloured shape, which development had been hinted at in Vétheuil.