Laughing in the Garden

It only took 8 minutes once bidding began before Claude Monet’s Haystacks (one of a series) sold at a Sotheby’s auction in 2019. Six bidders fought over its purchase before one of them won the opportunity to pay $110.7 million for the painting. It was the most expensive Impressionist artwork ever sold at a Sotheby’s auction.

Claude Monet painted in and around his home and garden in Giverny. “My garden is my most beautiful masterpiece,” he once said. No doubt that’s why he painted flowers and nature. It’s also why Monet's paintings are among the most treasured art in the world today. The haystacks series was a masterpiece from his garden and a reminder of the beauty of nature. They were visible right out of his front door. His fascination was a result of observing the way light moved around them, how the weather affected the scene and how the seasons changed everything. It’s a tight focus on a controlled view of a small part of the world, painted thirty times.

Some of Monet's thirty versions.

Claude Monet in his garden at Giverny

In my younger years as a student of art, I dismissed Impressionism as an obsessive and unintellectual focus on brushstroke, light and color. I was moved by a different kind of art, one that captured the emotional and experiential part of life. Ideas expressed in a way that had the power to change the world. That’s why I admired painters like Géricault, the French Romantic painter, and Repin, Russia's Leo Tolstoy of art. It’s also why I was drawn to photography. Show me a story. Make me know, think, feel and do.

The Raft of the Medusa, by Théodore Géricault. It's a portrayal of the truth and a cynical indictment of post-Napoleonic leadership.

Unexpected Visitors, by Ilya Repin. A revolutionary intellectual returns from incarceration to discover that his family had moved on with their life.

But I don’t have the same expectations of art now. Life is full of struggles and stress for the young, the old, the wealthy and the poor. No longer do I need to be reminded of this. More importantly, I've discovered the garden and the wisdom of cultivating calmness and joy. Monet was right in how he approached his paintings; we can affect life more successfully when we quietly focus on a small part of our world. The images he created of gardens and flowers bring happiness to a great many people, just as they did well over 100 years ago.

Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, "the earth laughs in flowers." I see it in the paintings of Monet. I see it in the garden. And now I listen.