Gardener's House at Antibes

Monet reached Antibes in January 1888 and stayed about four months, his first long spell of work on the Mediterranean. He complained about the wind, which kept pushing his easel over, and about a light he could not get hold of. He wrote that what he would bring back was sweetness itself, white and pink and blue, wrapped in a magical air. He came home with close to 40 canvases. In June, a month after he left the south, ten of the Antibes pictures went on show in Paris at the boulevard Montmartre gallery managed by Theo van Gogh, who bought the group for 11,900 francs. This one came to Cleveland in 1916 as a gift from Mr and Mrs J. H. Wade, the gardener's house on its slope and the Alps standing across the water.