Entering Normandy, you will visit Claude Monet´s home, the
Father of Impressionism. Discover the famous gardens created by the
impressionist painter, and the well known Japanese bridge in the midst
of its flowered paths and wather-lily ponds. This tour ends with the
visit of the Musée d´art Américain de
Giverny: Franco-American contributions to the history of art.
Claude Monet´s property at Giverny, left by his son to the
Académie des Beaux-arts in 1966, has, after completion of
large scale restoration work, become the Claude Monet Foundation,
inaugurated in 1980. The house, with its pink crushed brick
façade, where the leader of the Impressionist School lived
from 1883 to 1926, once again has its colourful décor and
intimate charin of former times. The precious collection of Japanese
engravings is displayed in several rooms, hung in the marmer chosen by
the master of Giverny himself.
The huge Nymphéas studio, a stone´s throw from the
house, has also been restored. It contains the Foundation´s
Shop. The gardens have been replanted as they once were and offer for
the admiration of visitors the Painting from nature which Claude
Monet´s contemporaries considered one of his masterpieces. The
rectangular Clos Normand, with archways of climbing plants entwined
around brilliantly coloured shrubs, lies before the house and studios,
offering from Spring to Autumn the palette of varying colours to the
painter-gardner who was Ecstatic about flowers. Lastly, the Water
Garden, formed by a tributary of the Epte, lies further away, shaded by
weeping willows. With its famous Japanese Bridge, its wistarias,
azaleas and its pond, it has once more become that casket of sky and
water which inspired the pictorial universe of the water lilies.Free
visit and Admission included.
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