Curated Theme
Gardens
Cultivated paradise — nature ordered into pleasure.
2,203 works in the collection
A garden is nature persuaded into art, and painters have always recognised a kindred project. The garden picture sits between landscape and still life: it has the depth and air of the outdoors but the deliberate arrangement of a tabletop of flowers. The French formal garden offered geometry and grandeur; the English landscape garden offered a designed wildness; and the Impressionists, Monet above all, made the garden the perfect Impressionist subject — a field of pure colour, light and reflection that they themselves had planted. Monet's water-lily pond is the apotheosis: a garden made expressly in order to be painted, dissolving at last into near-abstraction. The mood is overwhelmingly one of pleasure and ease. Watch for the path and the bench — the garden is made for a body to move through and rest in, and the painter usually leaves room for you. The garden painting is the most optimistic landscape there is: proof that, given care, the world can be coaxed toward paradise.
In this gallery
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The Swing -
The Terrace at Vernonnet -
The woman conversing with her children, as the leopard returns, egged on by a fox who is tied to his leg, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Thirtieth Night -
Young Woman Knitting -
Father, Mother, and Child in a Park -
Untitled -
Camille Monet (1847–1879) in the Garden at Argenteuil -
Uvedale Tomkyns Price (1685–1764) and Members of His Family -
The Hunt Breakfast -
Inter artes et naturam (Between Art and Nature) -
Copy after "Rubens, His Wife Helena Fourment (1614–1673), and Their Son Frans (1633–1678)" -
In the Sun -
The Dispatch of the Messenger -
A Spanish Garden -
The monkey advises the suspicious lion to cast off fear and take possession of his territory, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Twenty-ninth Night -
Angelica and Medoro -
The Parc Monceau -
The Monet Family in Their Garden at Argenteuil -
Children in Woods -
The Family of Claude Terrasse -
Anna Maria Cumpston -
Cleansing Medicinal Herbs in the Stream on a Spring Day -
Paintings after Ancient Masters: Scholars in a Garden -
Water Lilies (Agapanthus) -
Spring (Fruit Trees in Bloom) -
Woman Cooling Herself -
Group of Figures -
Morning in the Garden at Vernonnet -
Morning on the Seine near Giverny -
Palace banquet -
The Cascade -
The Gardener -
Water Lilies -
The Japanese Footbridge -
Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire -
A Game of Hot Cockles -
"Evening Faces" (Yūgao) chapter from The Tale of Genji (Genji monogatari) -
Two Girls with Parasols -
Florentine Poet -
Courtesan and Two Attendants on New Year's Day -
The Cascade -
Peaches, Pomegranate, and Fingered Citron -
Garden Gate, Near Ascain #7 -
Radha’s Confidante Brings Her to Krishna, based on poetry of Bihari (Indian, 1595–1663) -
Radha Awaiting Reconciliation with Krishna, from a Gita Govinda of Jayadeva -
The Drive, Central Park -
Todi Ragini, from a Ragamala Series -
The monkey, serving as the lion’s chamberlain, converses with the lynx and its mate who have arrived with their cubs to settle in the lion’s domain, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Twenty-ninth Night -
Women Play Music for Radha and Krishna: Chitrini Nayika, from a Rasikapriya -
Raja Dalip Singh of Guler on a Dais -
Pine Tree -
The Swing -
Desk Album: Flower and Bird Paintings (Bird with Plum Blossoms) -
Princely ascetic in the forest visited by ladies -
Krishna Receives a Flower Garland -
A woman with two children, having abandoned her home, goes into the forest where she encounters a leopard, from a Tuti-nama (Tales of a Parrot): Thirtieth Night -
Krishna asks for sweets, from a Sursagar of Surdas (Indian, c. 1480–1580) -
The Gardener -
Sakhi Persuades Radha to Meet Krishna, from a Gita Govinda (Song of the Cowherd) of Jayadeva -
Adam and Eve