Impressionist Gardens

New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 1995. Cloth, 80 pages, illustrations (chiefly colour); 32 cm. Firm binding, clean inside copy. First edition thus. Dust jacket protected in a mylar book cover. OVERSIZE! No priority/international, except by special arrangement. "Monet once said that only two interests in life were painting and gardening. In Giverny, he combined these enthusiasms to create the most famous of artists' gardens and an ever-changing source of inspiration, the watergarden, planted with several varieties of water lily. This beautifully illustrated book is the first about the impressionists' paintings of gardens anti flowers, a favourite and richly developed subject of all the artists, including Monet, Renoir, Pissaro and Sisley. For many of the Impressionists, cultivating flowers afforded as much pleasure as painting them anti they exchanged enthusiastic letter about the propagation of irises, chrysanthemums and dahlias. With their revolutionary approach to rendering outdoor effects and fleeting atmospheric conditions, they captured the sunlit colour and mood, and almost the smell of flower gardens. In doing so, they registered a new public sensibility: the love, not just of fresh air and greenery, but of gloriously colourful settings on a domestic scale." - Publisher.. 1st. Hardcover. Fine/Fine. Folio. Collectible.