A Corner of the Garden at Montgeron

Flowers crowd the edge of a still, man-made pond, their colors catching the light while broad-leaved trees rise along the border and lean toward the water. Soft clouds drift above, giving the whole scene a quiet, hazy atmosphere that softens the garden's edges. This view of a corner of the garden at Montgeron was painted by Claude Monet, dated to 1876, in oil on canvas, and it is held at the Hermitage Museum. Monet, who lived from 1840 to 1926 and worked in France, painted within the Impressionist movement, the same sensibility seen in his Haystacks. Looking closely, the reflection of the trees and sky on the pond's surface blurs into the painted flowers, so that the garden and its mirrored image seem to merge into one continuous field of color.