Monet’s Giverny Village and Charming Gardens

The driver will pick up clients from their hotel or residence.

The guide will greet the client as they exit their private car in Giverny. Then on, they client will stroll through the picturesque gardens with their guide while they indulge into the life of Claude Monet. A life filled with art and fondness which led him to retreat for the reaming 40 years of his life while visiting his home as the guide reveal all associated untold stories. Monet’s Gardens - The house and gardens, where Monet lived and painted for 43 years, have been recognised as among the Maisons des Illustres, and a Jardin Remarquable, rewarding their outstanding qualities. The estate was classified as a monument historique in 1976. Monet's paintings of the gardens, and of the sites' water lilies and the accompanying pond, bridge, and Weeping Willow tree, are exhibited in dozens of major collections. Claude Monet noticed the village of Giverny while looking out of a train window. He made up his mind to move there and rented a house and the area surrounding it.

In 1890 he had enough money to buy the house and land outright and set out to create the magnificent gardens he wanted to paint. Some of his most famous paintings were of his garden in Giverny, famous for its rectangular Clos Normand, with archways of climbing plants entwined around colored shrubs, and the water garden, formed by a tributary to the Epte, with the Japanese bridge, the pond with the water lilies, the wisterias and the azaleas. Beginning around 1887, several American Impressionist artists settled to work in Giverny, drawn by the landscapes, the overall atmosphere, and the presence of Monet. These included Willard Metcalf, Louis Ritman, Theodore Wendel, and John Leslie Breck. Soon many American extended their visits from summer through the entire year. American painter Theodore Earl Butler married Monet's stepdaughter and sometime-model Suzanne Hoschedé there in 1892. Frederick Carl Frieseke spent every summer from 1906 through 1919 in a residence next door to Monet's. The term Decorative Impressionism was coined in 1911 to describe Frieseke's work, and the term describes the work of a "second wave" of American painters in Giverny such as Richard E. Miller.

In December 1910, six of the Giverny artists (Frieseke, Miller, Lawton S. Parker, Guy Rose, Edmund Greacen and Karl Anderson) were given a show at the Madison Gallery in New York which termed them "The Giverny Group.” World War I largely marked the end of the art colony. Claude Monet lived and painted in Giverny from 1883 to his death in 1926, and directed the renovation of the house, retaining its pink-painted walls. Colours from the painter's own palette were used for the interior -green for the doors and shutters, yellow in the dining room, complete with Japanese Prints from the 18th and 19th centuries, and blue for the kitchen. Monet had the nearby river Epte partially diverted for the gardens and hired up to seven gardeners to tend to it. Monet gained much of his inspiration from his gardens and believed it was important to surround himself with nature and paint outdoors.

When Monet died in 1926, the entire estate was passed on to his son Michel. As he never spent time in Giverny, it was left to Blanche Hoschedé Monet, the daughter of Alice and the widow of Jean Monet, to look after the garden with the help of former head gardener Louis Lebret. After Blanche died in 1947, the garden was left untended. Michel Monet died heirless in a car crash in 1966. He had bequeathed the estate to the Académie des beaux-arts. From 1977 onwards, Gérald Van der Kemp, then curator at the Palace of Versailles, played a key role in the restoration of the neglected house and gardens, which had been left in a desolate state. In a bid to raise funds, he and his wife Florence appealed to American donors through the “Versailles Foundation-Giverny Inc.”. They, thereafter, dedicated themselves to its restoration. The Fondation Claude Monet was created in 1980 as the estate was declared public. It soon became very successful and now welcomes both French and international visitors from April to November.

Giverny - Several American Impressionist artists also settled in Giverny, drawn by the landscapes, the overall atmosphere, and the presence of Monet. Other attractions include the Museum of Impressionism Giverny, dedicated to the history of impressionism and the Giverny art colony, and the Hôtel Baudy, which was the center of artistic life in Giverny's heyday. It is now a café and restaurant, with period decoration. A settlement has existed in Giverny since neolithic times and a monument uncovered attests to this fact. Archeological finds have included bootees dating from Gallo-Roman times and to the earlier 1st and 2nd centuries AD. The town was known in ancient deeds as "Warnacum". The cultivation of grapes has been an occupation of the inhabitants of Giverny since Merovingian times. The village church dates from the Middle Ages and is built partially in the Romanesque style, though additions have since been made. It is dedicated to Sainte-Radegonde. The village has remained a small rural setting with a modest population (numbering around 301 in 1883 when Monet discovered it) and has since seen a boom in tourism since the restoration of Monet's house and gardens.

The driver will bring the clients back to the hotel or residence.