Painted gardens prove a peaceful tonic to modern life

Water Lillies (1916-26) Monet

Picasso observed that “art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life,” so what better way to start a weekend than to spend time in a gallery?

And even more than that, how therapeutic would that art be if it was to be about gardens?

The announcement of London’s first art blockbuster of 2016 was met by much muttering that the Royal Academy was merely chasing after the money of a sort of art show dilettante.

There seemed to be a suggestion that Painting the Modern Garden: Monet to Matisse was not quite ‘serious,’ as art goes.

The Wall of the Vegetable Garden, Yerres, Caillebotte

Even the Daily Mail got in on the act with a sneery piece about ‘Monet mania’.

But none of that was going to put off someone who has, in recent years, experienced Damascene moments when it comes to both of those named artists.

So a week ago, after work, The Other Half and I toddled along to Piccadilly.

It must be said that, in terms of the Matisse element of the exhibition, it’s a bit of a disappointment.

Organised in conjunction with the Cleveland Museum of Art, some paintings are being seen in London but not in the States and visa versa.

Woman and Child in a Meadow at Bougival, Morisot

In the US, according to the catalogue (which is rather poorly printed in terms of colour reproduction, by the way), there will be three Matisse’s on view that are not to be found in London.

The two here are not his finest, although Rose Marble Table (1917), on a second look, does generate light, even though, by Matisse’s standards, the background is downright muddy. Bloody geniuses.

But that’s being picky. There are fascinating works here by myriad other painters – some of whom were new or little-known to us – and then there are the works by Monet.

The exhibition opens with two fascinating pairings: first, of flower pictures by Renoir and Monet and then, Renoir’s Monet Painting In His Garden At Argenteuil together with the painting that Monet is shown working on, The Artist’s Garden in Argenteuil (A Corner of the Garden with Dahlias), from 1873.

View of a Garden, Linköping, Johan Fredrick Krouthén

The first duo are highly conventional still life paintings; the second sees both artists moving toward what we recognise today as an Impressionist approach.

The exhibition makes much of the rise of recreational gardening among the growing middle class and its influence on artists, although some painters continued to be inspired by their own preference for rather more traditional vegetable gardening – a group that included Camille Pissarro, who painted his kitchen garden.

And indeed, Gustave Caillebotte did the same, with The Wall of the Vegetable Garden, Yerres (1877) proving a rare pastel work in such exhibitions, and very modern, with its stark geometry.

The Terrace at Méric, Bazille

In making sure that the link between recreational gardening and painting is clear, there are exhibits of seed catalogues, magazines and other gardening materials, plus a rather marvelous film of Monet painting.

There are painters represented from around the world, including the likes of Joaquin Sorolla, with his Spanish courtyard gardens dripping in heat and the cool of shade.

In such terms, Frédéric Bazille’s The Terrace at Méric (1867), though unfinished, reeks of the warmth and light of the south.

The Birch Avenue in the Garden of Wannsee ... Libermann

We have the chance to meet up again with other artists, including Berthe Morisot, whose beautiful Woman and Child in a Meadow at Bougival from 1882 is on display, while there are the joys on a single Manet in Young Women Among Flowers from 1879.

There are several fine works by John Singer Sargent, and then there are the Scandinavians, Karl Nordström, Laurits Tuxen and Peder Krøyer.

For me, Johan Fredrik Krouthén’s View of a Garden, Linköping (1887-88), stood out from these works.

Murnau II, Kandinsky

Light-dappled paths leading through tree-filled gardens are a particularly successful recurring theme – Max Libermann’s The Birch Avenue in the Garden of Wannsee Looking West (1918) is just one excellent example.  

Setting aside the fact that whoever named the next part of the exhibition ‘Avant Gardens’ (hohoho) should be given a serious seeing to (fnar fnar), we then move into an explosion of colour. 

And what is very clear is that the artistic leap forward from red and white borders to riots of colour was made possible, in part at least, by improvements in botanical science. 

Emil Nolde’s canvases of flowers bring extra vivacity to the exhibition, as does Kandinsky’s wonderful Murnau II. 

Munch’s Apple Tree in a Garden (1932-42) is a revelation if one is primarily only familiar with The Scream. 

Rose Marble Table, Matisse

We are even treated to three fascinating small pieces by Klee, while Klimt’s Cottage Garden from 1905-07 is unmistakable and Santiago Rusiñol’s Gardens of Monforte (1917) has wonderful light.

But then, as throughout this exhibition, is Monet – taking an extraordinary artistic journey in one lifetime.

And the three vast Water Lillies canvases, from 1915-26, 1916-26 and 1915-26 (left to right as they are hung) are staggering. Now all hanging in different US galleries, they are reunited here, in Europe, for the first time in the best part of a century.

Like the paintings at the Orangerie in Paris, they have the power to evoke a sublime, almost spiritual response. Their apparent simplicity belies their power and their beauty.

So forget the cynics and the snide snobs. Quite simply, time spent contemplating these works is worth the admission price alone.

Painting the Modern Garden: Monet to Matisse is at the Royal Academy in London until 20 April.

Taking the imagination for a walk

Redgreen and Violet-Yellow Rhythms

The Tate Modern’s exhibition on Paul Klee: Making Visible might not quite be exhaustive, but exhausting it most certainly is.

Laid out in 17 rooms – some large, some small with only four or five pictures – it takes a serious investment of time to visit.

As a neighbour of ours, having visited with his partner, who is herself an artist, commented with a note of weariness: “There are a lot of paintings”.

A great deal of Klee’s work is also on small canvases, so require you to get up close and use a little more attention.

By the time we reached the final rooms, visitors were scurrying past us having clearly had enough.

Battle Scene from the Comic-Fantastic Opera 'The Seafarer'

That being said, it’s an exhibition that offers plenty of rewards – not least in providing such an extensive selection of his work, from 1912 to his premature death in 1940.

In the later part of that career, Klee – a Swiss German – was among the many artists who were damned by the Nazis as ‘degenerate’.

Yet for all Hitler’s hatred of anything beyond the most traditional painting, Klee’s work has a timeless quality that can make it feel as ancient as it is modern, and most definitely has something of folk art about it.

Blue Night

There is a playfulness on occasion and an apparently naïve joy about some of the works that is reminiscent of Chagall.

Yet there’s also plenty here to illustrate Klee’s seriousness – not least in his explorations of colour.

The gradation paintings are themselves fascinating and very beautiful and however muted some of his palette may appear to be, there is a depth of colour here that is vibrant and has great warmth.

Fish Magic

The experimentation extends beyond colour to the media used, including what was painted on, how it was primed – and also how the works are displayed.

In some cases, Klee made his own mounts and frames, thus ensuring that the works take on a sense of having greater dimension and of being artistic objects rather than simply being flat pictures.

Personally, I was coming to Klee with little more than a spot of book-learned knowledge, but found myself drawn in to some of the works in particular.

Walpurgis Night

Redgreen and Violet-Yellow Rhythms from

1920 is the exhibition poster piece, and this apparently simple oil painting of geometric blocks of colour, dotted with trees, is a perfect example of the attraction.

Perhaps it’s the Christmassyness of the green and red, but getting lost in it conjures, for me, a sense of a northern winter: of dark, starry nights and snowy terrain and forests.

But this sort of thing was a repeat theme.

In Walpurgis Night, a gouache from 1935, the faces of creatures and witches look out from behind the moody blue wood.

Bewitched-Petrified

Here we are again – into the realm of the forest in the German psyche. It has a thrilling, slightly scary feel about it, and a sense of fairy tales, something that comes through in a number of works.

Bewitched-Petrified (watercolour on plywood, 1934) is another with the sense of folk/fairy tales and the forest.

Fish Magic (oil and watercolour on canvas, 1925) is one of the larger pieces, and seems to have an inner glow, as though it’s partly stained glass, lit from behind.

Blue Night (1937) is a lovely, soothing use of colour and shape – no matter how apparently loosely sketched the latter is in this instance.

It’s also a good illustration of what I mentioned earlier about media. In this case, it’s a “pastel on cotton on coloured paste on burlap; original frame”.

The Path into the Blue

The Path into the Blue (1934) appealed too: again, it’s a simplicity that allows the imagination full rein.

Oh, and it’s got a blue moon in it, which had The Other Half rolling his eyes as I (quietly) burst into the opening refrain of Manchester City’s anthem.

Of the more abstract works, I also liked The Invention (watercolour on cotton on plywood, 1934) and, quite differently, The Other Half particularly liked Still Life with Crucifers (oil on linen on cardboard, 1925).

Still life with Crucifers

Of the fantastical and the fairy tale, Battle Scene from the Comic-Fantastic Opera ‘The Seafarer’ (oil, graphite, watercolour and gouache on paper, bordered with watercolour, ink and gouache on cardboard, 1923) has it by the bucketload.

Comedy (watercolour and oil transfer drawing on paper, 1921) is just one more example of many with a playful and yet strange quality about it.

It was Klee himself who said that drawing was “taking a line for a walk”.

The Tate’s exhibition, which is on until March, offers a pefect opportunity to take the eyes for a walk and let the imagination run wild.

Just don’t expect to see it in anything less than an hour and a half.

Tate Modern