Chrysanthemums in the Garden at Petit-Gennevilliers

Caillebotte painted this beautiful picture of the year before death. He lived in his house, in the town of Petit-Gennevilliers, far from Paris, raising flowers and building boats. In the garden he cultivated irises, roses, orchids, and chrysanthemums. Chrysanthemums were then hugely popular in France, celebrated for their resplendent colors and associations with the exotic Far East. The word for chrysanthemum in Japanese sounds the same as the word for the sun. A chrysanthemum with 16 petals has been a symbol of the Japanese Imperial family for many centuries and sometimes performs the role of the state emblem. This unusual, close-up view of densely packed blossoms has been related to Caillebotte’s project for dining room doors ornamented with images of plants—a conception akin to the decorative series that his friend Monet based on his own garden at Giverny.

P.S. Read the brief story of Claude Monet’s garden in Giverny here.