Le Jardin de l'artiste à Vétheuil

Monet made this garden at Vetheuil, a small village on the Seine northwest of Paris, where he had moved with his family in 1878 and where his first wife Camille died the next year, still young. These were hard years for him, short of money and grieving, yet also among his most productive. In the summer around 1880 he painted the garden path several times, banked on both sides with tall sunflowers at full bloom, climbing toward a house you cannot quite see. A small child stands on the steps, half-swallowed by the flowers, and blue-and-white pots line the stairs. He soon left Vetheuil for good, and within a few years settled at Giverny, where garden-making and painting would become nearly the same activity.