Garden paintings: 16 gardens from Monet to Larsson
Monet at Antibes, Caillebotte’s chrysanthemums, Van Gogh’s poet’s garden, Carl Larsson’s birch-tree breakfast and gardens from Persia, China and Japan: sixteen gardens to hang at home.
Gardens are the oldest dream in art: paradise itself was a garden. Persian painters drew royal gardens full of cypress and fountains, Chinese scholars met in garden pavilions to talk about poetry, and in Europe the walled garden of the Middle Ages became the sunlit lawns and flower beds of the impressionists.
The sixteen pictures below travel from a Persian manuscript of 1444 to Carl Larsson’s Swedish summers. They include Monet, who made his own garden at Giverny into his greatest subject, and his friend Caillebotte, who was as serious about gardening as about painting. Each can be ordered as a print prepared from the museum’s scan.
1. Royal Garden Reception
Iran, probably Shiraz, Royal Garden Reception, 1444. Opaque watercolor, ink, gold and silver on paper. Cleveland Museum of Art.
The oldest garden here, painted in Iran in 1444 as the opening page of a book of poetry. A prince receives his court in a garden of flowering trees and cypresses under a sky of gold. Persian gardens were walled paradises, and the word paradise comes from the Persian for one.
2. Paintings after Ancient Masters: Scholars in a Garden
Chen Hongshou, Paintings after Ancient Masters: Scholars in a Garden, 1598–1652. Album leaf; ink and color on silk. Cleveland Museum of Art.
Chen Hongshou painted this album leaf in the style of the ancient masters. Two scholars sit in a garden among strangely shaped rocks, which Chinese collectors prized like sculpture, in a world of quiet talk and wine.
3. The Locked Rose Garden
Matthäus Merian the Elder, The Locked Rose Garden, 1618. Atelier colour edition of the engraving. Science History Institute, Roy G. Neville Historical Chemical Library.
In the alchemical book Atalanta Fugiens of 1618, a man stands outside a walled rose garden whose gate is locked: the secret of alchemy, like the garden of paradise, is not easily entered. Fable has coloured the original engraving for this edition.
4. The Terrace
Delft school, The Terrace, c. 1660. Oil on canvas. Art Institute of Chicago.
Painted in Delft around 1660, the same years and the same city as Vermeer and Pieter de Hooch. A sunny terrace behind a house, with brick paving and plants, is turned into a picture of ordinary contentment.
5. Rinaldo and Armida in Her Garden
Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, Rinaldo and Armida in Her Garden, c. 1742–45. Oil on canvas. Art Institute of Chicago.
From Tasso’s epic poem: the sorceress Armida keeps the crusader Rinaldo enchanted in her magic garden, while his comrades spy on them, ready to break the spell. Tiepolo paints the garden as a sunlit stage.
6. In a Shoreham Garden
Samuel Palmer, In a Shoreham Garden, ca.1830. Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
Samuel Palmer lived in the village of Shoreham in Kent in the 1820s and 1830s and saw it as a visionary paradise. A great apple tree, thick with blossom, fills his garden like a cloud, with a small figure in red beneath.
7. Iris Garden
Katsukawa Shuncho, Iris Garden, c. 1781/89. Color woodblock print; oban triptych. Art Institute of Chicago.
Iris gardens were famous summer sights in Edo, and visitors walked on zigzag wooden bridges through the flowers. Katsukawa Shunchō spreads the scene across three sheets, with fashionable women strolling among the blooms.
8. Enjoying the Cool in a Garden
Kitagawa Utamaro, Enjoying the Cool in a Garden, c. 1788/90. Color woodblock print; oban triptych. Art Institute of Chicago.
On summer evenings in Edo people went out to enjoy the cool air. Utamaro shows a group of women and a child in a garden as the heat lifts, in a triptych as wide as a little landscape.
9. Woman in a Garden
Berthe Morisot, Woman in a Garden, 1882–83. Oil on canvas. Art Institute of Chicago.
Berthe Morisot painted the gardens around her homes in Paris and the country, often with her daughter or her friends. This woman almost dissolves into the green, painted with the same quick strokes as the leaves.
10. Gardener's House at Antibes
Claude Monet, Gardener's House at Antibes, 1888. Oil on canvas. Cleveland Museum of Art.
Years before Giverny, Monet painted gardens wherever he went. At Antibes in 1888 he looked through a tree at the gardener’s cottage and painted a whole garden of Mediterranean light.
11. Chrysanthemums in the Garden at Petit-Gennevilliers
Gustave Caillebotte, Chrysanthemums in the Garden at Petit-Gennevilliers, 1893. Oil on canvas. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Caillebotte was a passionate gardener who corresponded with Monet about plants. At his house at Petit-Gennevilliers he grew prize chrysanthemums, and painted them so close that the bed becomes a pattern.
12. The Poet's Garden
Vincent van Gogh, The Poet's Garden, 1888. Oil on canvas. Art Institute of Chicago.
Van Gogh painted the public garden opposite his Yellow House in Arles to decorate the room he prepared for Gauguin. He imagined poets walking there, and called it the poet’s garden.
13. Under the Trees (from "The Public Gardens")
Édouard Vuillard, Under the Trees (from "The Public Gardens"), 1894. Distemper on fabric. Cleveland Museum of Art.
Vuillard painted a set of nine large panels of Paris parks for a dining room in 1894. This one, Under the Trees, shows nannies and children in dappled shade, painted in distemper so the colours are soft and chalky, like a tapestry.
14. The Gate. From A Home
Carl Larsson, The Gate. From A Home, 1899. Watercolour. Nationalmuseum, Stockholm.
Carl Larsson’s book A Home, published in 1899, showed his family’s life at Lilla Hyttnäs in Sundborn and changed Swedish taste for good. The book opens, fittingly, at the garden gate.
15. The Veranda. From A Home
Carl Larsson, The Veranda. From A Home, 1899. Watercolour. Nationalmuseum, Stockholm.
Larsson’s veranda, with its painted woodwork and pots of plants, is the threshold between house and garden, where his family spent their summer afternoons.
16. Breakfast under the Big Birch. From A Home
Carl Larsson, Breakfast under the Big Birch. From A Home, 1896. Watercolour. Nationalmuseum, Stockholm.
The happiest picture in A Home: the Larsson family eats breakfast at a long table under the big birch, with the children, the maid and the dog. It is the Swedish summer as everyone wishes it were.
Shown in a room, it brings summer to a kitchen or dining room all year round.
Create your portrait in this style
Garden pictures bring the outside in, so they work best in rooms that face away from the green: a city flat, a north-facing kitchen, a windowless hallway. A pair of flower beds either side of a door, or a long Japanese triptych above a sofa, makes a room feel like summer all year. For more, see famous flower paintings and Carl Larsson and Scandinavian art.
Questions
What are Monet’s most famous garden paintings?
His Water Lilies series and The Japanese Footbridge, painted in his garden at Giverny from the 1890s until his death in 1926, are the most famous. Earlier he painted gardens at Argenteuil, Vétheuil and on the Riviera, including Gardener’s House at Antibes in this list.
Who painted gardens besides Monet?
Gustave Caillebotte, Berthe Morisot, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Vincent van Gogh, Édouard Vuillard, Carl Larsson, Max Liebermann, Gustav Klimt and John Singer Sargent all painted gardens memorably.
Which garden picture suits a kitchen?
A bright, close-up garden such as Caillebotte’s Chrysanthemums or Larsson’s Breakfast under the Big Birch. Their colour holds up well in daylight and steam.
Can I order a garden painting as a print?
Yes. Every picture in this list can be ordered as a print on paper or canvas, prepared from the museum’s own scan.