Monet and Van Gogh
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The association of women and flowers as a metaphor for fertility is at least as old as the Roman goddess Flora. It is not, therefore, surprising that both Monet, Women in the Garden (1866-67), and Van Gogh, La Berceuse (1889), employed this fairly common idea. But a comparison of the manner in which they used this visual trope demonstrates some of the fundamental differences in their approaches to painting. Monet's revolutionary realism did not preclude the use of a classically balanced composition. And his cool, somewhat distant, scientific approach is accompanied by a generalized, classically schematized metaphor. His presentation of the cycle of female fertility has an abstract, intellectualized quality even though, as biographical facts show, the theme may have had important personal associations at the time. Van Gogh's presentation, on the other hand, gives expressive force to the metaphor that matches the degree of feeling he had for the subject of his portrait. Neoimpressionist color theory, his personal connection with the sitter, and his version of the metaphor combine to create a warm, intensely personal picture. Monet's Women in the Garden is a very large work (8'4" x 6'9") that was intended for the Salon of 1867. It was a second attempt at a monumental work that combined the Impressionist desire to depict the modern world with a display of Monet's radically realistic depiction of sensory data. The earlier work, his Déjeuner sur l'herbe, was immense (15'
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wears a hat and shades her face with a small parasol. She is slightly withdrawn from the world, lost in contemplation of the bouquet in her lap which she does not grasp but allows to spill across her dress. Her bouquet consists of pale flowers with only a few red blossoms at the edge. Behind her the woman in the striped dress, with her fashionable version of a servant's ribboned cap, stares at the woman holding the bouquet to her face. The standing woman's flowers are much darker--reds and yellows, with only a few white blossoms--and she is most the most shaded and hidden from the sun.
If the reaching woman is an inexperienced girl, and the seated figure is a married, or at least experienced, woman holding flowers in her lap as a token of potential fertility, the woman with the dark bouquet (and the attendant-like figure) may be pregnant. Unlike any other dress in this painting or in Monet's Déjeuner sur l'herbe, her dress is not cinctured, and, unlike those of her companions, her dress is not basically white, but a dark yellow tinged with orange. Her costume consists of an upper jacket that bells out over her hips and covers the skirt that continues beneath it. The only decorative element in her dress is a slight variat
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Van Gogh, Women Garden, Throughout Monet, Isaacson Monet, Mme Roulin, La Berceuse, Van Gogh's, Garden Monet, Isaacson Observation, Paris Monet's, van gogh, mme roulin, women garden, la berceuse, van gogh's, déjeuner sur l'herbe, déjeuner sur, sur l'herbe, female fertility, painting women, plein air, women garden monet, painting women garden, portraits mme roulin, magazine 134 1992,
Approximate Word count = 3171
Approximate Pages = 13 (250 words per page)
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