Photographs by Corrado Serra.
“Following in the footsteps of 19th-century artists who celebrated the out-of-doors as a place of leisure, renewal, and inspiration, the exhibition Public Parks, Private Gardens: Paris to Provence explores horticultural developments that reshaped the landscape of France and grounded innovative movements—artistic and green—in an era that gave rise to Naturalism, Impressionism, and Art Nouveau. As shiploads of exotic botanical specimens arrived from abroad and local nurserymen pursued hybridization, the availability and variety of plants and flowers grew exponentially, as did the interest in them. The opening up of formerly royal properties and the transformation of Paris during the Second Empire into a city of tree-lined boulevards and parks introduced public green spaces to be enjoyed as open-air salons, while suburbanites and country-house dwellers were prompted to cultivate their own flower gardens. By 1860, the French journalist Eugène Chapus could write: ‘One of the pronounced characteristics of our Parisian society is that . . . everyone in the middle class wants to have his little house with trees, roses, and dahlias, his big or little garden, his rural piece of the good life’.
The important role of parks and gardens in French life during this period is richly illustrated by paintings, drawings, photographs, prints, illustrated books, and objects in The Met collection by artists extending from Camille Corot to Henri Matisse, many of whom were gardeners themselves. Anchored by Impressionist scenes of outdoor leisure, the presentation offers a fresh, multisided perspective on best-known and hidden treasures housed in a Museum that took root in a park: namely, New York’s Central Park, which was designed in the spirit of Parisian public parks of the same period.” — The Met

Center: Louis Martin Berthault, Fruit or flower basket, designed 1812; Sèvres Manufactory, 1823

Installation view of section “Parks for the Public”

Camille Pissarro, The Garden of the Tuileries on a Spring Morning and The Garden of the Tuileries on a Winter Afternoon, 1899

Installation view

Installation view

Installation view of section “Revival of Floral Still Life”

Left: Edgar Degas, A Woman Seated beside a Vase of Flowers (Madame Paul Valpinçon?), 1865. Right: Claude Monet, Chrysanthemums, 1882

Left: Vincent van Gogh, Sunflowers, 1887. Center: Claude Monet, Bouquet of Sunflowers, 1881. Right: Vincent van Gogh, Irises, 1890

Installation view of section “Private Gardens”

Left: Paul Cézanne, The Pool at Jas de Bouffan, ca. 1885–86. Right: Berthe Morisot, The Gate at Bougival, 1884

Claude Monet. Left to right: Bridge over a Pond of Water Lilies, 1899; Camille Monet in the Garden at Argenteuil, 1876; Garden at Sainte-Adresse, 1867

Installation view of section “Portrait in the Garden”

Left: Mary Cassatt, Lydia Crocheting in the Garden at Marly, 1880. Center: Mary Cassatt, Portrait of a Young Girl, 1899. Right: Edouard Manet, Madame Manet (Suzanne Leenhoff) at Bellevue, 1880

Left: Franz Xaver Winterhalter, The Empress Eugénie (Eugénie de Montijo, Condesa de Teba), 1854. Center: Edouard Vuillard, Garden at Vaucresson, 1920; reworked 1926, 1935, 1936. Right: Pierre Bonnard, From the Balcony, 1909

Left: Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, The Streetwalker, ca. 1890–91. Right: Berthe Morisot, Young Woman Knitting, ca. 1883
The exhibition has been organized by Susan Alyson Stein, Engelhard Curator of Nineteenth-Century European Painting, Department of European Paintings, with Guest Curator Colta Ives, Curator Emerita, Department of Drawings and Prints, and the assistance of Research Associate Laura D. Corey, Department of European Paintings.
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