The Other Artists of Giverny

View of Giverny from Vintage Postcard - A. Lavergne
(Musée d’Art Américain Giverny)

Monet arrived in Giverny in 1883 looking for a quiet, off-the-beaten-track rural village which would offer him a variety of landscape subjects to paint. Giverny has an interesting diversity of topography—hills and heights, a beautiful river valley, fields of wildflowers and agricultural fields dotted with haystacks in the fall. The poplar and willow-lined river Epte flows through the valley and provided many fine picture making opportunities with the Seine River also nearby. He could not have imagined how popular his presence would make the village.

Giverny was much more than Monet’s home. During his lifetime, it became the focal point for an important art colony which attracted painters from all over the world.

The first artists to follow on Monet’s heels arrived around 1885 and came looking for a rural landscape undiscovered by the hordes of ar…