Nasturtiums

By 1892 Caillebotte had largely stopped living in Paris. He was at Petit Gennevilliers, on the far bank of the Seine from Argenteuil, in a property he and his brother Martial had bought in 1881 with the money their parents left them, and the ground around the house had become the main business of his days. He put up a greenhouse, grew orchids and dahlias, and traded plants and advice by letter with Monet, who was doing the same thing at Giverny. Most of his late pictures come from within a few steps of that door. Nasturtiums are a cheap annual. You sow them straight into the ground in spring and they scramble over whatever is nearest, and that is what they were doing in the garden he had made.