Agapanthus

Claude Monet, 1914-26 · Gallery 515 · Floor 5

Look at those stems lean. Long arcs, little purple flowers at the ends. Green everywhere. They're Agapanthus. Monet planted them along his pond at Giverny. He starts the big pond paintings in his seventies. This is one of them. Oh, and he's doing very well at this point. Six full-time gardeners. He's bought the house, expanded the grounds, made a water garden. A Japanese bridge, the whole thing. So, he's got the garden. He's got the money. But his eyes are giving him trouble. Cataracts. He says he's choosing paints by the labels on the tubes. Think about that. Monet. Checking which one's blue. Meanwhile, one of his closest friends is Georges Clemenceau. France's prime minister during the last year of the First World War. Also the minister of war. And he gardens. As if he doesn't have enough going on. He's the one who talks Monet into giving the big pond paintings to France. As a kind of victory present. Twenty-two of them end up in oval rooms in Paris. And for years, Clemenceau's on him about the eyes. Get them operated on. He'd trained as a doctor, too. Anyway, look back at those purple flowers. All that green. Clemenceau writes him: "You taught me to understand light." In that same letter he says: "My eyes need your color."

▶ Listen on Listen to Frank

Also in Gallery 515