Watergardens as Art

It’s 1889. You’re at the World’s Fair in Paris, what the locals call l’Exposition Universelle du 1889, and you’ve joined them in marking the 100th anniversary of the French Revolution. The world is changing: Paris is at the center of those transitions and you want to see for yourself what’s going on.

You know that the fair has attracted exhibitors from around the world, but you’re drawn to France because you’d heard about the Eiffel Tower and can’t wait to be amazed, even stunned by its elegant splendor. You were also motivated to come by what you’d been hearing about the city’s art scene – especially the painters and sculptors who seem so intent on setting the world on fire.

This is Paris at its greatest and most influential – incredibly exciting, completely unique and distinctly mind-bending.

Once you begin processing what you’re seeing, once you recover from the shock of what you’ve been witnessing on the grand scale, you start sorting through the minutiae that the exhibition itself has to offer. Before long, you’ve wandered into a small area in a grand setting where you meet a little-known French lawyer/horticulturalist who has set up a display as one of the many attractions along the “World’s Fair Route.”

You might not be knocked sideways by what you see, but be aware that at least one fellow – Claude Monet – is far ahead of you in picking up on the significance of the horticulturalist’s startling display.

A GRAND AWAKENING

The talented watergardener has developed hybrid flowers with subtle tones of pink and yellow as well as vibrant reds. His name is Joseph Bory Latour-Marliac, his flowers of choice are water lilies, and nobody in Europe has ever seen specimens like these before. In fact, for those lucky enough to have watergardens, only white lilies have ever been available.

His display is at the Chateau de Bagatelle, long famed for its architecture and gardens and a major draw on its own. In that context, the new flower colors developed by Latour-Marliac are little more than a sideshow, a momentary diversion or curiosity for the vast majority of people passing by.

But those bright, floating flowers at the Chateau de Bagatelle catch Monet’s eye, big time. At that point, he is 49 years old, an established artist whose paintings to date have mostly depicted the French countryside he’s seen near his country home in Giverny.

After the fair, Monet, already an avid gardener, undertakes the construction of his own watergarden in response to what he’s seen at the chateau. His first pond is not unlike those commissioned by many modern property owners: It is too small. So Monet expands it, dramatically, to the proportions hundreds of thousands of modern visitors see to this day on a trip to the French countryside 50 miles or so northwest of Paris.

Once his new pond is complete – filled by partial diversion of a local waterway – Monet contacts and purchases from Latour-Marliac many different varieties of his colorful hybrid water lilies while also populating the space with plants that represent his take on the spirit of Japanese gardens.

It’s still a French garden, of course, but he’s infused it with weeping willows, bamboo, Japanese iris and peony, ginko trees and amazing wisterias with hanging clusters of blue flowers. He also includes a Japanese-style bridge but steers clear of stone lanterns, tea houses and other traditional hallmarks of the style.

Monet has never traveled to Japan. Instead, his inspiration comes from an extensive collection of prints, woodcuts and other artifacts that have helped form his impressions of a dreamily exotic locale.

GARDEN ARTISTRY

By his own admission, Monet is an artist who has been influenced by other painters, craftsmen and places. His watergarden, for example, was inspired by Japanese gardens as well as by the garden and architecture he saw at the Chateau de Bagatelle – not to mention the pioneering horticultural wizardry of Latour-Marliac and his achievement of inserting vivid colors into his water lilies.

All of these cross-currents of artistry, innovation and creativity came together near what was the cultural epicenter of the world at that time. In this grander context, Monet’s Giverny home was itself much more than a garden: It was a fully realized work of art, one that reflected layer upon layer of influence and has since inspired generations of painters and landscape artists.

Indeed, Monet went on to make this amazing work of art into another form of art by treating his watergarden as the subject of his paintings. In the last 30 years of his life, he produced 250 canvasses that examine and explore the space in intimate detail as well as on the grand scale. The paintings in this Water Lilies series have become seriously valuable, with some examples bringing up to $80 million at auction.

Monet said, “You know I’m entirely absorbed in my work. These landscapes of water and reflections have become an obsession. It’s quite beyond my powers at this age, and yet I want to succeed at expressing what I feel.” That pursuit went on for more than 30 years until he died at age 86 in 1926.

So here we are: One of the most famous and influential artists of all time became obsessed with painting a watergarden he’d devised on his own as a result of a random encounter during a big exposition in Paris in 1889. And he spent the rest of his life making works of art inspired by a work of art – a thought that makes me proud to be a watershaper and also inspires me as I put my mind and back into working on my clients’ ponds and watergardens and pursue my own works of art.

How many of us still use the chromatella lilies developed by Claude Monet’s supplier, Joseph Bory Latour-Marliac? As I see it, each of us who does is helping to perpetuate art and share inspiration in wonderful ways. In fact, it inclines me to look at watergardening as a true art form that stretches in an unbroken line that started in Japan and Europe hundreds of years ago, beat a trail through Giverny and has ended up shaping aquatic designs in spaces around the world to this day.

I like that sense of heritage. It helps me aspire. It helps me achieve.

Mike Gannon is owner and lead designer at Full Service Aquatics, a pond installation and service specialist based in Summit, N.J. A certified Aquascape contractor, he may be reached at [email protected].