サント・アドレスの庭

Monet painted this in the summer of 1867, at a seaside town near Le Havre where his family had a garden looking out over the English Channel. He was 26 and short of money, leaning on relatives for a place to stay, and the man seated calmly in the foreground with his back to us is most likely his father, Adolphe. It is a sunlit, orderly scene, gladioli in full bloom, two figures at the fence, sailboats and steamers dotting the horizon toward Honfleur. Look closely at the brushwork and you can already see the split that would define him. Parts of the garden are painted smoothly in the old way, while the water and the flowers dissolve into quick separate dabs of pure color. The two flags snapping in the wind echo the flat horizontal bands the whole picture is built from.