Comparisons to Monet Bothered This Artist. Now They’re Side by Side.
Two decades ago Monet’s Monet’s Garden (1935) was the subject of a painting by Henri Matisse. Now, after a half century, the two works are side by side.
Monet’s painting was a painting of Monet’s garden, a garden he planted with exotic art. His paintings are filled with the beautiful, exotic plants that grow on that garden and his works are filled with them. But one of Monet’s greatest masterpieces was his garden.
Henri Matisse worked on his Monet’s Gardens painting for years, working on it over and over to perfect it. Then, when he finished it, he moved it from his studio to France’s National Gallery in Paris to have it sit alongside Monet’s masterpiece, a painting of his own garden. The first time Matisse saw it, he called it a copy of Monet’s. Upon inspecting it for comparison, Monet’s was obvious. Matisse called it a “copy” of Monet’s—so the comparison is not a good one.
In fact, it has not been until recently that Matisse had a chance to examine the Monet’s painting that he admired so much.
This Monet’s Garden painting is unique because it shows Monet’s garden from the point of view of the gardener there, the owner of the land. Many of Matisse’s artworks involve the perspective of a viewer looking at the “art”, the work, the artworks.
Matisse’s paintings also use perspective in a more abstract way: he looks at a painting from the point of view of the observer and looks at the art, the artworks, from that point of view.
It is the perspective to look at the art that gives Matisse’s art his unique ability to make art. This is true in both his painting, Matisse’s Monet’s Garden (above) and Matisse’s famous painting Unt
