Chrysanthemums

Claude Monet

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Keywords: Chrysanthemums

Work Overview

Chrysanthemums
Claude Monet
Date: 1897
Style: Impressionism
Genre: flower painting
Media: oil, canvas
Dimensions: 80.3 x 120 cm
Location: Private Collection


The 1890s sow new developments for Monet, who ceased to paint his family in landscape backgrounds and concentrated all his efforts instead on producing monumental series paintings. Through these he was able to take a single motif and experiment with the effects of light and colour through the changing time of the day or the season. Rather than direct representations of the passing moment, these images transcended reality to become the artist's own interpretation of the natural world before him. 


In 1890 he was finally able to buy the rented house and garden in Giverny and, as a further mark of stability,', Alice and Monet were married in 1892. He was financially secure and had achieved public acclaim through his giant series paintings. 


The garden at his house in Giverng was Monet's great passion, especially towards the end of his life. He employed, a number of gardeners and designed his garden according to colour and contrast, as though it were a painting. Chrysanthemums is a study of just such colour and contrast, with the natural world reduced to on abstract patten.