Provence Artists Gardens

Artists have always been drawn to Provence, seduced by its outstanding natural beauty its fields of lavender, vineyards and olive trees. In this lavishly illustrated book, Julia Droste-Hennings presents over twenty Provençal gardens styled by the adept minds and hands of artists. Their gardens take many forms, from imposing sculpture parks to delicate assemblages and spaces that take inspiration from Italian classical gardens. Evocative and inspiring, this sumptuous book is an exciting showcase and an original source of gardening inspiration.

The Artist’s Garden will feature up to 20 gardens that have inspired and been home to some of the greatest painters of history. These gardens not only supplied the inspiration for creative works but also illuminate the professional motivation and private life of the artists themselves – from Cezanne’s house in the south of France to Childe Hassam at Celia Thaxter’s garden off the coast off Maine. Flowers and gardens have often been the first choice for artists looking for a subject. A garden close to the artist’s studio is not only convenient for daily material and ideas, but also has the advantage of changing through the seasons and over time. Claude Monet’s Giverny was the catalyst for hundreds of great paintings (by Monet and other artists), each one different from the one before. Sometimes a whole village becomes the focus for a colony of artists as at Gerberoy in Picardy and Skagen on the northernmost tip of Denmark. This book is about the real homes and gardens that inspired these great artists – gardens that can still be visited today. The relationship between artist and garden is a complex one. A few artists, including Pierre Bonnard and his neighbour Monet were keen gardeners, as much in love with their plants as their work, while for others like Sorolla in Madrid, his courtyard home was both a sanctuary and a source of ideas.

The spectacular transformation of Paris during the 19th century into a city of tree-lined boulevards and public parks both redesigned the capital and inspired the era’s great Impressionist artists. The renewed landscape gave crowded, displaced urban dwellers green spaces to enjoy, while suburbanites and country-dwellers began cultivating their own flower gardens. As public engagement with gardening grew, artists increasingly featured flowers and parks in their work. Public Parks, Private Gardens includes masterworks by artists such as Bonnard, Cassatt, Cézanne, Corot, Daumier, Van Gogh, Manet, Matisse, Monet, and Seurat. Many of these artists were themselves avid gardeners, and they painted parks and gardens as the distinctive scenery of contemporary life. Writing from the perspective of both a distinguished art historian and a trained landscape designer, Colta Ives provides new insights not only into these essential works, but also into this extraordinarily creative period in France’s history.

The award-winning author of VAN GOGH'S GARDENS returns with a sumptuously illustrated book showcasing the garden and art of one of the most significant painters of the Impressionist Era. Acclaimed garden writer and photographer Derek Fell continues his celebrated series with a handsome volume featuring the paintings of Cézanne and stunning photographs of his restored garden, which attracts nearly 100,000 visitors each year. This beautifully illustrated book takes a groundbreaking approach to the man and his art. Using images of Cézanne’s studio and gardens in Aix-en-Provence as a starting point, Fell shares the artist's innovative theories about structure, texture, shadow, and light. Through Cézanne’s musings and philosophy of colour and form - captured vividly by the author - the reader enters the artist's creative world, and visits the vertical and architectural gardens Cézanne loved, along with Mt. Sainte-Victoire, the mountain he immortalized in his paintings. A visually breathtaking tour through Cézanne’s beautifully preserved garden and lavish gardens inspired by his work, the book features over a dozen paintings and more than a hundred original colour photographs. CÉZANNE’S GARDEN is a revealing look at one of the world's most beloved Impressionist masters.

Garden-makers from all over the world are redefining Mediterranean style in harmony with international trends. From the smallest city courtyard to the largest landscape projects, these creations set off the famous Provençal landscapes in a hundred different ways.

Ever since the nineteenth century Provence has fascinated its numerous visitors. The heart of Provence-the lower Rhone valley-offers an incomparable range of sites: Roman ruins, winding Renaissance hill towns, and labyrinthine grottoes dominated by lofty peaks. Yet the gardens of Provence have remained as secret as the region itself is celebrated. Gardens in Provence takes its readers on a fascinating private tour of some of the loveliest hidden treasures in the south of France. Author Louisa Jones spent more than five years visiting nearly two hundred gardens and her lively and informative text marries history and horticulture, conveying all the charm of the region. With its extensive plant list and visitor's guide, this book is an unending source of inspiration for garden lovers. Spectacular photographs by Vincent Motte capture all the color, beauty, and magic of this patch of heaven on earth.

Enduring inspiration to countless artists, Provence is a rural paradise, a verdant, fertile environment that offers endless opportunities for those practitioners of what the philosopher Francis Bacon called ""the purest of human joys"". The art of landscape gardening demonstrates more than almost any other activity the human need to create havens of peace and contemplation. Benignly Fashioning nature, the landscape gardener responds to what is present, as well as importing dazzling exotic plants and trees to reveal an extraordinary new world of the senses. Provence then is a gardener's idyll -- a place where the extremes of ""wilderness"" and the symmetry of geometric construction come together in some extraordinary designs. These creations building on the qualities of the area -- light and a dry climate -- do not divorce themselves from their surroundings but rather create the impression that indeed the whole of Provence is one magnificent garden. Whether employing the region's evergreens, its widespread shrubbery (for topiary), its lavender meadows, its plentiful herbs and spices, or its ""desert"" vegetation -- cactus and the like -- the soil's the limit and the imagination the only perimeter Fence. From the humid tropical to the unspoilt hills, From the cubist inspiration at Hyres to the Zen patterns of Erik Borja, and from the coast to the valleys, only in Provence can you say that you walk in gardens as varied as dreams, yet as sensual as life.

Starry Night is a fully illustrated account of Van Gogh's time at the asylum in Saint-Remy. Despite the challenges of ill health and asylum life, Van Gogh continued to produce a series of masterpieces – cypresses, wheatfields, olive groves and sunsets. He wrote very little about the asylum in letters to his brother Theo, so this book sets out to give an impression of daily life behind the walls of the asylum of Saint-Paul-de-Mausole and looks at Van Gogh through fresh eyes, with newly discovered material.