Gardens

The Metropolitan Museum has a number of artworks depicting gardens, many of which date back to the medieval period. These artworks provide insight into how different cultures and religions have represented gardens over time.

The Cascade

    In 1756, having won the Prix de Rome, Fragonard departed for four years at the French academy in that city, a traditional rite of artistic passage.
    Practically nothing is known of his journey from Paris, but on the return trip he traveled by way of Florence to Venice, west to Marseilles, and north through Lyons.
    He visited the principal cities of Italy again in 1774, as well as Vienna and Frankfurt.
   This painting is most likely an imagined conglomeration of the kinds of gardens, architecture, and sculpture he encountered

Versailles

    Renoir's later career consisted of more traditionally inspired motifs.
    This autumn landscape shows a view of the courtyard on the north side of the chateau of Versailles.
    Chestnut trees line the allée and are painted softly with detached brushwork in vibrant colors of the season.

The Garden of the Tuileries on a Winter Afternoon

    In December 1898 Pissarro wrote from Paris that he had "engaged an apartment at 204 rue de Rivoli, opposite the Tuileries, with a superb view of the garden, the Louvre to the left, in the background the houses on the quays behind the trees, to the right the Dôme des Invalides, and the steeples of Sainte-Clotilde behind clumps of chestnut trees. It's very beautiful. I shall have a fine to paint."
    During the following winter and spring he painted eight cityscapes looking toward the Louvre, and six, like this one, of the Tuileries Gardens with Sainte-Clotilde in the background.

Poplars, Éragny

    This canvas of summer 1895 shows a corner of Pissarro's garden at Éragny, a small village in northern France where he lived from 1884 until his death.
    Pissarro likely painted this view from his studio window, as a persistent eye ailment hampered him from working outdoors.

The Huis ten Bosch at The Hague and Its Formal Garden (View from the East)

    Both an artist and an inventor, Van der Heyden specialized in precise and luminous cityscapes and views of country houses.
    These two jewel-like paintings depict Huis ten Bosch (House in the Woods), the country home of the widowed Princess of Orange and still a residence of the Dutch royal family today.
    Van der Heyden shows the house amid its formal garden of hedgerows, pavilions, and obelisks, peopled by laboring gardeners and strolling aristocrats.

View of Marly-le-Roi from Coeur-Volant

    Sisley walked up the hill from his rented house in Marly-le-Roi, near Paris, and selected a northwest view overlooking the town.
    The building at left was located within the border of neighboring Louveciennes.
    The lush, manicured grounds to the right of the path belonged to the more extensive property in Marly-le-Roi owned by Robert Le Lubez, an amateur singer and patron of contemporary composers such as Charles-François Gounod and Camille Saint-Saëns.

The Huis ten Bosch at The Hague and Its Formal Garden (View from the South)

    Both an artist and an inventor (among other urban improvements, he conceived the fire pump), Van der Heyden specialized in precise and luminous cityscapes and views of country houses.
    These two jewel-like paintings depict Huis ten Bosch (House in the Woods), the country home of the widowed Princess of Orange and still a residence of the Dutch royal family today.
    Van der Heyden shows the house amid its formal garden of hedgerows, pavilions, and obelisks, peopled by laboring gardeners and strolling aristocrats.

A Shaded Avenue