Dahlias, Garden at Petit Gennevilliers

This is Caillebotte's own garden at Petit-Gennevilliers, on the bank of the Seine opposite Argenteuil, where he spent his last years growing things and designing racing yachts. The dahlias are in front of his greenhouse. The woman in the long skirt and sun hat, bent over something in her hands, is most likely Charlotte Berthier, who lived with him, and the dog is looking at the painter.

He and Monet wrote to one another about plants and traded cuttings. In that same year, 1893, Monet was digging the pond at Giverny that turned into the water-lily garden.

Caillebotte died the following February, at 45. The painting reached Washington in 2016 as a gift from a Californian family, and it hangs near a Monet garden of about the same size.