Le pont japonais (The Japanese Bridge)

In 1883 Monet and his family moved to the rural community of Giverny, initially leasing and then purchasing a house. Ten years later he bought a marshy area across the railway lines from his house, and having gained permission, diverted a stream, gradually turning what had been unusable, derelict land into his famous water garden. Here he was able to combine his passion for botany with that of Japanese art forms, although he stated that he didn’t set out to create a Japanese garden intentionally.

From 1899 until the 1920s, Monet painted the pool and its arching blue-green Japanese bridge at least one hundred times; works that evolved from the richly coloured Impressionist landscapes of the 1890s into the works painted in the years prior to his death in 1926, which are almost abstract evocations of light and air.

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