Lot Essay
RELATED WORKS:
Winter Garden of Giverny, oil on canvas, 38 3/8 x 64½in.,
Museé Municipal A.G. Poulain, Vernon, France
RELATED LITERATURE:
Frederick William MacMonnies 1863-1937, Mary Fairchild MacMonnies 1858-1946, Deux Artistes Americains à Giverny, June 18-September 11, 1988, Musée Municipal A.G. Poulain, Vernon, France, p. 86, illus., p. 89, no. 5A
W.H. Gerdts, Monet's Giverny: An Impressionist Colony, New York, 1993, pp. 134-137
Having studied at the Académie Julian and with Carolus Duran in France in the 1880s, Mary MacMonnies Low received the prestigious mural commission for the Woman's Building at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. Recognized and praised by the leading muralist Puvis de Chavannes, her Primitive Woman hung opposite Mary Cassatt's Modern Woman.
MacMonnies executed Garden in Giverny in the 1890s or soon after 1900. The painting depicts the garden in Giverny where she and her husband Frederick William MacMonnies spent their summers. The garden of their converted fourteenth-century monastery enclosed a fountain sculpture of Pan and served as the setting for a series of paintings depicting the seasons. Dr. William H. Gerdts has described the garden, writing, "The MacMonnies developed the garden surrounding Le Prieure until it became the envy of their fellow colonists and a rival to Monet's in size and beauty. By 1901 Emma Bullet thought that in Giverny 'the most beautiful, the most picturesque and artistic garden is the MacMonnies' [sic] garden.'" (W.H. Gerdts, Monet's Giverny: An Impressionist Colony, New York, 1993, p. 133.)
Winter Garden of Giverny, oil on canvas, 38 3/8 x 64½in.,
Museé Municipal A.G. Poulain, Vernon, France
RELATED LITERATURE:
Frederick William MacMonnies 1863-1937, Mary Fairchild MacMonnies 1858-1946, Deux Artistes Americains à Giverny, June 18-September 11, 1988, Musée Municipal A.G. Poulain, Vernon, France, p. 86, illus., p. 89, no. 5A
W.H. Gerdts, Monet's Giverny: An Impressionist Colony, New York, 1993, pp. 134-137
Having studied at the Académie Julian and with Carolus Duran in France in the 1880s, Mary MacMonnies Low received the prestigious mural commission for the Woman's Building at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. Recognized and praised by the leading muralist Puvis de Chavannes, her Primitive Woman hung opposite Mary Cassatt's Modern Woman.
MacMonnies executed Garden in Giverny in the 1890s or soon after 1900. The painting depicts the garden in Giverny where she and her husband Frederick William MacMonnies spent their summers. The garden of their converted fourteenth-century monastery enclosed a fountain sculpture of Pan and served as the setting for a series of paintings depicting the seasons. Dr. William H. Gerdts has described the garden, writing, "The MacMonnies developed the garden surrounding Le Prieure until it became the envy of their fellow colonists and a rival to Monet's in size and beauty. By 1901 Emma Bullet thought that in Giverny 'the most beautiful, the most picturesque and artistic garden is the MacMonnies' [sic] garden.'" (W.H. Gerdts, Monet's Giverny: An Impressionist Colony, New York, 1993, p. 133.)