Dazzling in its use of color and exploration of the properties of reflection, Les Arceaux de roses, Giverny is one of only five canvases painted by Claude Monet between the summer of 1912 and 1914. Three of these paintings, including the present work, focus on trellises covered in roses, set on the boat landing on the south side of Monet’s water garden. The present work is a stunning symphony of richly applied and worked pigment and by far the most energetic in the series. The other two works painted during this period, both titled La Maison de l’artiste à Giverny, depict a view of Monet’s house and gardens in the immediate vicinity of his front door.

Writing about these two groups, Paul Hayes Tucker states: “Despite certain resemblances to those earlier works, each of these new groups is quite distinctive. The various forms of foliage in the views of the house, for example, surge and swirl as if competing for prominence in the scene while the house peers into the fray from behind the tangled brushwork like an inquisitive though somewhat fearful spectator. The vitality of the bushes and trees in these two pictures is repeated in the flower-wrapped pergolas and the far bank in the water-garden paintings, although the intensity of the views of the house is slightly reduced here because of the smaller size and the distance of the fauna…. These three new pond paintings are meditative, mysterious and expansive, commensurate with their Eastern inflection (Exh. Cat., London, Royal Academy of Arts and Boston, Museum of Replica Handbags s, Monet in the 20^th Century 1998-99, p. 58).

By 1890, Monet had become financially successful enough to buy the house and large garden at Giverny, which he had rented since 1883 (see fig. 2). With enormous vigor and determination, he swiftly set about transforming the gardens and creating a large pond, in which waterlilies gradually matured. Once the garden was designed according to the artist’s vision, it offered a boundless source of inspiration, and provided the major themes that dominated the last three decades of Monet’s career. Towards the end of his life, he told a visitor to his studio:

Once discovered, the subject of waterlilies offered a wealth of inspiration that Monet went on to explore for several decades. His carefully designed garden presented the artist with a micro-cosmos in which he could observe and paint the changes in weather, season and t.mes of day, as well as the ever-changing colors and patterns. John House wrote: “The water garden in a sense bypassed Monet’s long searches of earlier years for a suitable subject to paint. Designed and constantly supervised by the artist himself, and tended by several gardeners, it offered him a motif that was at the same t.mes natural and at his own command - nature re-designed by a temperament. Once again Monet stressed that his real subject when he painted was the light and weather” (John House, Monet: Nature into Art, New Haven, 1986, p. 31).

Monet often approached his subjects at Giverny in series, a method that he had developed in his high Impressionist works and perfected in his famous series paintings of the early 1890s, such as those of haystacks, poplar trees and the façade of Rouen cathedral. Monet fascinated over the varying effects of seasonal light upon these subjects. In Giverny, subjects such as the Japanese footbridge (see fig. 3) or, as in the present work, a garden arch provided the artist with an anchor for a given series.

Monet thus paid exacting attention to the details of the garden, including maintaining the pond and plants in a perfect state for painting. Elizabeth Murray writes, "The water gardener would row out in the pond in a small green flat-bott.mes d boat to clean the entire surface. Any moss, algae, or water grasses which grew from the bottom had to be pulled out. Monet insisted on claritys . Next the gardener would inspect the water lilies themselves. Any yellow leaves or spent blossoms were removed. If the plants had become dusty from vehicles passing by on the Chemin du Roy, the dirt road nearby, the gardener would take a bucket of water and rinse off the leaves and flowers, ensuring that the true colors and beauty would shine forth" (E. Murray, Monet, Late Paintings of Giverny from the Musée Marmottan, New Orleans, 1995, p. 53).

In 1908 Jean-Claude Nicolas Forestier visited Monet at Giverny and gave a thoughtful description of Monet’s working methods for the review Fermes et Châteaux: "In this mass of intertwined verdure and foliage… the lilies spread their round leaves and dot the water with a thousand red, pink, yellow and white flowers… The Master often comes here, where the bank of the pond is bordered with thick clumps of irises. His swift, short strokes place brushloads of luminous color as he moves from one place to another, according to the hour… The canvas he visited this morning at dawn is not the same as the canvas we find him working on in the afternoon. In the morning, he records the blossoming of the flowers, and then, once they begin to close, he returns to the charms of the water itself and its shifting reflections, the dark water that trembles beneath the somnolent leaves of the water-lilies" (quoted in D. Wildenstein, Monet or The Triumph of Impressionism, Cologne, 2003, p. 384). The unending variety of forms and tones that the ponds provided allowed Monet to work consistently on a number of canvases at the same t.mes (see fig. 4). With large scale and a wide-ranged palette, Les Arceaux de roses, Giverny is a unique and grand stat.mes nt of adoration for this artist's haven.

Distinct from his earlier, pre-1910 depictions of his garden at Giverny, these later compositions are remarkably daring. The brushstrokes are heavily laden and equally applied across the surface of the canvas. This painterly technique brings the eye to the surface of the canvas and contends with the illusions of a receding space and a differentiation between the physical properties of the water, foliage and structure. Among this limited series of three paintings (see figs. 5-7), the present work is the same size and format at that in the collects ion of the Phoenix Art Museum (W. 1779). The other related work (W. 1781), with a more rectangular format and mossier aesthetic, was sold at auction in November 2021 for $24.1 million.

Unique to the present composition is the heightened sense of immediacy as seen in the carefully delineated group of waterlilies in the foreground at right. Crystalline pinks, blues and blue meet in the sky of Les Arceaux de roses, Giverny, lending a lustrous atmosphere to the work. The soft reflection of the flowered arches play along the surface of the water, illuminating the midground in tones of violet and rose. Highlighted by white blossoms throughout the water and the trellis, the work presents a veritable symphony of color to its audience.