| Summary: | The spectacular transformation of Paris during the nineteenth 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--trends that spread throughout Europe and even to America. As exotic botanical specimens arrived from abroad and local nurserymen pursued hybridization, the availability and variety of plants and flowers grew tremendously, as did public interest in them. A revival in floral still-life easel painting (rarely practiced since the seventeenth century) brought the garden's beauty indoors. 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 into these essential works and a delightful portrait of an extraordinarily creative period in France's history.
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