All language subtitles for Great Art Series 3 4of5 Monet to Matisse 1080p ITV

Welcome to Great Art.

For the past few years,
we have been filming

in the biggest exhibitions,
art galleries

and museums in the world,

exploring some of the greatest
artists and art in history.

Not only do we record
landmark shows,

but we also secure privileged access
behind the scenes.

We then use this as a springboard
to take a broader look

at extraordinary artists.

In this film,
we focus on a blockbuster

that came to the Royal Academy
in London a short while ago,

Painting The Modern Garden:
Monet To Matisse.

No-one quite imagined
just how popular it would be.

But it was more than that,
it was an exhibition that sought,

amongst other things,
to show how gardening

wasn't seen as a hobby
by these artists,

but as an artform in itself.

They became great horticulturalists
as part of their efforts

to create gardens, which were then
the subjects of their art.

By tracing these relationships,

the show also traced the development
of modern art.

Our film not only captures
this gorgeous show,

a landmark in every sense
at the Royal Academy,

but also travels
to the gardens themselves

to help us explore how artists
painted the modern garden.

"We went for a walk in the garden."

"It's a perfect garden,
a panorama of flowers

"whose beauty is deeply moving."

"They are so tall on their stems

"that they seem to walk along
with us."

"Today, for the first time,

"Monet took me across the road
and the railway line

"beyond which the garden extends,

"but where the landscape changes
its appearance completely."

"There is Monet's pond
where his water lilies float...

"..surrounded by his pale willows."

"A pond which he has created as God
created the caprices of nature."

I think we love to try
and compartmentalise artists

so they have singular disciplines.

You've got a painter,
you've got a sculptor.

No sense that, as Michelangelo was,

a great sculptor
can be a great draughtsman

or that a great painter
can also be a great sculptor.

And Monet was clearly
a great sculptor

because in his garden,
he's sculpting nature,

he's making sure that there are
larger flowers, smaller flowers,

darker tones, lighter tones,

there are colours that are fighting
against one another

and dragging you through the scene.

It's a great natural sculpture.

I don't think you should undermine
quite how important

that kind of creativity is
in our world.

So every person who goes out
into their own garden

and creates a space for them
is building something

that can have the same effect on you
as a wonderful painting,

that can allow you
to immerse yourself, to retreat,

to find solace in beautiful things.

Artists have always had
a fascination with gardens

because artists can't help
but have a fascination with nature.

You know, Durer, Botticelli,

Charles Rennie Mackintosh,
Monet, Matisse,

these are all people who find
in a simple flower,

a whole universe,

in the structures,
in the engineering.

In the elegance and beauty
and simplicity of a flower,

you really can find a whole world,
and that's what you are doing

when you're mixing up colours
on a palate.

You're finding
whole new opportunities

to express yourself
in very simple acts.

And nature expresses so much,
gardens can express so much

even in a space that we just
seem to take for granted so often.

I think the premise
of this exhibition,

the linkage between art and gardens,
is really interesting and timely,

partly because of the low
cultural status of gardens

in the hierarchy of the arts,
which is sort of somewhere down

with knitting, say, or embroidery

and other what we might call
"applied arts" nowadays.

But I think
as this exhibition shows,

many of the greatest artists
of the early 20th century

were interested, if not obsessed,
with their gardens

and the different effects,
chromatic effects,

the effects of atmosphere and place,

they were really interested
in exploring the garden.

First of all, as subject matter
for their own work,

but in some cases, most notably
in Monet's case, of course,

the garden itself becomes an artwork
in its own right.

We think Monet may have been
the greatest painter of gardens

in the history of art,
but he wasn't alone.

There are many other artists who are
invested in this subject, deeply.

Artists who you might expect
are Impressionists

cos they're obviously interested
in the natural world,

but I think other artists that
people will be surprised to learn

were also active gardeners,
fascinated by gardeners,

and you see a wide range of them
in the exhibition.

They are dedicated
to the project of modernity.

The garden, I think,
has a very wide context

in the 19th century.

We have to remember
this is the century

of Darwin, after all,
his Origin Of Species in 1859

draws people's attention
to the possibility

that the world wasn't created
just in seven days,

but has a longer history
going back to fossils

and the evidence that they offer.

And, of course, in a sense,
he is therefore exploding, Darwin,

the whole concept of paradise
and of the Garden of Eden

and these places of perfection
that have underpinned

so much of Western cultural thought
and tradition.

There are depictions of the Garden
of Eden in ancient manuscripts.

Of course, it becomes
a really crucial subject

during the medieval period,
you have depictions of the Virgin,

and there are all kinds
of inner garden,

and there are conventions
about that.

She's in an enclosed garden
which is symbolic of her virginity.

During the baroque era,
gardens were a significant aspect,

actually, of royal power
because you have great kings,

Louis XIV and others, creating
magnificent, enormous gardens.

Most people know the gardens
of Versailles,

but this occurred in many places
in Europe,

and these were actually
an expression of the king's power.

This whole culture began to change
in the 19th century

when you had a rise
of the middle class

and more people could have time
to do private pleasure gardening

as opposed to practical gardening
just for growing vegetables.

Now, they're doing this
for personal pleasure,

there's a lot of feelings
that this contributes

to the health of family life,
to the health of the culture,

and you also have, at the same time,
new varieties and species

of flowers and plants being imported
from around the world,

from Asia, Africa, the Americas.

And, of course,
we have science intersecting here,

and they are taking
these imported varieties,

they're creating new hybrids.

And artists get involved
with this new flora culture

in an attempt to really create
new types of species and varieties.

And that is all facilitated
by technological developments,

because for the first time also,
from the 1820s,

there is a really effective way
of carrying plants,

and not just seeds,
back from foreign lands.

These include the Wardian case
invented by a British doctor,

Dr Nathaniel Bagshaw Ward,

and then we also have the greenhouse
being developed, the conservatory,

and that enables these exotic plants
to be overwintered

and also enables them to
be brought on and then planted out.

And, in a way, people are having
to rethink the relationship

they, as individuals,
have with nature.

I think there are certain plants
which are recurring

within these canvases
that when you garden with them,

you understand why they're here.

Dahlias, for instance,

are an extraordinary thing
in themselves,

they're incandescent
when they flower,

they break all the rules
of what goes with what.

The dahlia-grower is fascinated
in the flower,

and that juxtaposition of two things

creates often
this tremendous tension and a clash.

There are poppies which appear
again and again

which also have that amazing ability
to jump out of a landscape.

There are chrysanthemums
for the same reason,

and there're things which, in a way,
are larger-than-life flowers,

peonies.

There are things
which take over a moment

which make
a particular time of year.

As a colour exercise,
it's a wonderfully freeing thing.

Horticulture is an amazing thing
because it links art with science,

perhaps more
than almost any other practice.

So it is inevitable really,
that people like Monet,

who become seriously interested
in gardens,

then get seriously interested
in the technical side of things

at a very advanced level.

So we're talking Claude Monet
and Gustave Caillebotte.

I'm sure there are one or two more,
but they are the main ones

and they were
great gardening buddies.

And they were interested in
going to the flower exhibitions,

seeing the water lilies
bred by Latour-Marliac

or the great nurseries,
French nurseries,

like Vilmorin at this time,

breeding chrysanthemums
and dahlias in new forms.

And we know that Monet,
like many a keen gardener,

was really obsessed by novelty.

He ordered these new hybrid species
of water lilies,

largely produced by a grower
who still exists in France today

called Latour-Marliac.

What was new at the time,

they were these bright pink
and even red,

and, I believe,
sometimes scented water lilies,

whereas the more common variety
were white or yellow.

I think Monet is very keen on having
these accents of pink and red

in the overall grey-green
watery environment of the pond.

So he's creating a garden
with an artist's eye.

And he's also creating a garden
or an environment

as subject for him to paint,

over which he has a great deal
of control.

There were many writers
who were discussing the importance

of gardening to family life.

This was a place where
French civilisation could be reborn,

this was a healthy place
to be with children and families,

and that is seen actually
in the Impressionist paintings

and in those paintings by Monet,

where you see a couple
in the background,

and it's a reference
to the garden of love.

So it becomes part
of everyday bourgeois life,

and that really is a primary subject
for the Impressionists

but other artists
working in this period.

It's all about a sort of quiet,
domestic idyll,

or very often that becomes
a very popular subject with artists.

So I think the small, private garden
fits very well

into that general view of the world.

And so the need to escape to nature
and to the restorative powers

of nature and gardening
become very strong.

We begin the exhibition
with two very interesting paintings.

One is by Monet of his dahlia garden

in the house he was renting
in Argenteuil,

which is just outside of Paris
in the early 1870s.

Here,
he is a poor, struggling artist,

this is just the moment
when the Impressionist group

is beginning to emerge.

He couldn't afford his own house,

he's just living
in rented properties,

but wherever he went,
he made a garden.

And next to it, we were very happy
to get the loan of painting

by Renoir, painting Monet
painting the dahlia garden.

These two pictures together
tell us quite a lot.

First of all, they tell us that
dahlias were a very popular flower.

It also shows the companionship
and this sort of camaraderie

between these young Impressionists

when they were
a fringe avant-garde group.

There we have Monet
standing before his easel,

he's got his brush extended,

he's putting a touch of colour
on the canvas.

We don't see the picture
he's painting,

Renoir leaves that
to our imagination,

but we can see that it must be
the great mass of dahlias alongside.

And it's as though Monet's taking
his colours from those dahlias

and transferring them
with the brush to the canvas.

The garden is obviously
an outdoor studio,

you can use it as an extension
of your house

in order to get at, first-hand,
the effects of light and atmosphere

that become increasingly important

with the rise of Pleinairism,
painting out-of-doors.

And those elements of modern life
can be found,

can be situated in a garden,

and that, in a way, is a means
of merging the modern life theme

with the outdoor painting theme,

and the garden is
a useful meeting point for the two.

This painting by Tissot
was one of a group

that he did in his home
in St John's Wood in London.

A wonderful garden
he developed there,

which was modelled partly
on the Parc Monceau in Paris.

I think there is a tremendous theme
running through Tissot's work

where we have the woman
as someone who is to be admired

almost as an object,
but also a mystery,

and the garden is traditionally
associated with the woman.

The woman is described
as the "good genius" of gardens

in some of the 19th century
horticultural journals,

but equally, she's the one who is,
in the ancient tradition

of the biblical narrative,
for example,

the Virgin and her Hortus Conclusus.

That underpins a lot of the imagery
of the woman in the garden, still,

in the 19th century.

And he's maybe just blurring
those boundaries

so that we don't quite know
if the woman

is in the traditional mode
of a virgin in a garden,

or in a rather more risque mode,

because conservatories
were certainly places

where seduction and all sorts
of licence was happening.

It was a space,
the garden itself, in turn,

where you might dispense
with etiquette

that would've ruled in the drawing
room or the parlour, salon.

So there are, I think,
little hints maybe that Tissot

is manipulating the tradition
and not just giving us

a standard version of a woman
in a garden.

Here we've got chrysanthemums,
which were plants introduced

in 1789 to Europe.

They came from the Orient,
from China, Japan,

and they were
an immediate sensation, really,

and developed into a whole variety
of forms and shapes,

and there was a great art
in picking them, cutting them

so that you would develop the best
for the next year.

You could also take various
other forms of growth

and make them come on.

I always find looking at paintings
of gardens or flowers,

you can usually tell fairly quickly
if the person who's painted it

has a real interest in the subject.

There's something about the way they
depict the flowers in particular,

I suppose the form
of the whole plant,

they are able to honour the plant.

They're interested enough in it
as an entity,

as a being in the world,
if you like,

to actually spend an awful lot
of time over it,

just as much time
as they might spend

over a portrait of a person.

But in some cases, most notably
in Monet's case, of course,

the garden itself becomes
an artwork in its own right.

"If I could see one day
Claude Monet's garden,

"I really feel I would see a garden

"in more tones and colour
than flowers."

"A garden which could be less
an old flower garden

"than a colourist garden,
so to speak."

"Flowers displayed together
but not as nature,

"because they were sown
so that only the flowers

"with matching colours
will bloom at the same time...

"..harmonised to the infinite
in all ranges of blue or pink."

"A powerful manifestation
of the artist's intent

"to dematerialise them
of everything but colour."

Well, there are both modern gardens

and there's modern paintings
of gardens,

and there's a great variety,
there's a tremendous variety.

For Monet,
it's growing new types of plants,

new more spectacular varieties
of flowers,

arranging them specifically
in colour harmony

so he's orchestrating environments
so that they're blooming

in different colours
at different times of the year.

For other artists,

it's the way they interpret
the garden that's modern.

We hope that people coming
to the exhibition

will get great pleasure from seeing
a number of spectacular works of art

by famous and well-known artists.

Monet of course is really
the heart of the exhibition,

but also works by Matisse,
by other Impressionist artists,

and then there's Bonnard's garden
at Vernonnet,

which is up in Normandy
on the Seine,

only about three miles from Giverny,
in fact.

But it couldn't be a more different

from Monet's very carefully planned
and designed garden.

Bonnard really just let nature
take its course.

He called it "mon jardin sauvage",
"my wild garden",

and when you go there today,
there is very little evidence

of a formal garden, certainly.

But nevertheless, this garden
with its panoramic view

out to the Seine beyond
is the setting

of many of Bonnard's paintings.

We have many paintings too
by perhaps less familiar names,

but artists who really responded
to the theme of the garden

in many different ways.

Max Liebermann made a garden
on Lake Wannsee

just outside of Berlin.

Liebermann's garden
follows this idea,

current in German design
at the time,

of constructing the garden
around a series of outdoor rooms.

So there's a rose garden,
there's a hedge garden,

there's a kitchen garden
at the back of the house,

and then there are formal flowerbeds
and a long birch alley,

which leads as a sort of avenue
down to a lake,

providing these viewpoints
and perspectives.

So there are many different ways
in which gardens could be organised,

and artists were really
searching for something

that was particular to them
and their culture.

Sorolla, for example, in Spain

laid out an interior
courtyard garden

in a series of rooms in his house,
and he had pools and water.

This was a place of reflection,
for family life,

but also for spiritual thinking.

One of the questions
you might ask yourself,

even subconsciously,

standing in front of one
of these paintings is,

"Do I believe this is a real place,
does this garden actually exist?"

And in the case of a painting
like this,

it is absolutely the case,
but I think in a way,

the question isn't so much,
"Does that garden exist?",

but "Did that moment exist?"

In an earlier age,
this picture would have been called

a "swagger" painting,
because it shows

a very successful man
in his white suit

at his weekend home on Long Island,
just outside New York.

It's Louis Comfort Tiffany,
the famous designer,

so he's painting, he's showing us
his artistic side and his skill,

but this is a very successful man.

And the flowers,
I think, interestingly,

are used in this painting by Sorolla
as a way of bolstering

his credentials
as a man of the world,

they're almost machismo,
these blooms.

I think actually
they are mainly hydrangeas

massed behind him
in different colours,

but their bulbous blooms....

It's almost like he's
the sort of artistic Napoleon

and this is his imperial guard
backing him up behind

with his dog as well,

and all these accoutrements,
if you like,

of the country gentleman,

you might see in a Gainsborough
or something.

For more avant-garde artists,

flowers and gardens were a source
of emotional inspiration.

They're not so much interested
in whether it's a hyacinth,

but for many of these artists
like Matisse or Emil Nolde,

it's really the colour.

Emil Nolde created gardens
wherever he lived,

and they were a great inspiration
to him.

I think the act of gardening
also was very spiritual

and important to him.

His last garden was created
in Seebull,

which is on the border of Denmark
and Germany.

And he designed his garden

so that the paths created
two entwined letters

that are the initials of himself
and his wife,

so you know how personal this garden
was to him.

And it was the great source
of inspiration for his art

for the last 20 years of his life
or so, and it still exists today.

I was really intrigued
by Emil Nolde's garden at Seebull,

because he
built this jewel-like place,

this fantasy realm.

He didn't really create the garden
as a place to be experienced

as a series of pictures,
as a tableau,

he created the garden
as an intense space

in which you are immersed,
and that's the feeling

that you have when you go
into the garden today.

There are a series of winding paths
around beds,

which are absolutely chock-filled
with all kinds

of bright and colourful flowers
which have not been,

and we can see this
in the paintings,

which were not chosen
for their compatibility

with each other, necessarily,

but chosen for the incredible
colours that they exhibit,

and which Nolde was then able
to experiment with in paint.

Emil Nolde is an artist
who is very invested

in the project of modernity,

and he wants to paint
in a certain way

that's very basic, it's primal.

He wants to get
at the most basic level

of intense human emotion,

and he uses a technique
that is meant to convey that.

For example, if you look
at his paintings from the '20s,

he paints on very rough burlap,
it's really rugged,

and he paints
with incredibly heavy brushstrokes,

I mean, just caked-on paint.

And if you'll notice,
it is very matte,

and that's partly because
when you're painting with oil,

the oil soaks into that,

and he leaves these
very heavily encrusted surfaces.

It's very rough and rugged,

and it's very shocking
to many people

to see a painting in that condition,
but that's what he wanted.

He wanted something
that wasn't refined.

I mean, he was the enemy
of the refined,

and he wanted that sense
of rawness and intense emotion

in his paintings.

I think for many of these artists,
this was a spiritual experience.

For them, it was a connection
with nature.

It is kind of amazing to think
that artists

like Matisse or Kandinsky,
who are so theoretical,

would be interested in nature
in this way,

but it was their way of connecting.

And, for example,

there's a fantastic painting
in this exhibition

that is of a garden in Tangier,
and Matisse had for years

been painting very conceptual works,
severe in their geometry.

And he said specifically,
when he wrote a letter,

requesting permission to see
this Islamic garden,

that he wanted to reconnect
with nature.

And he was extremely excited
about this garden

that he saw in North Africa,
through the wildness,

the exotic plants,

and he painted the first
of three pictures,

which the first one
is in this exhibition,

in a flash of inspiration.

It's just quickly-applied paint,
you can still see pencil drawing,

he even took the backside
of the brush

and scratched into the surface.

And it's just an explosion
of colour and emotion,

so it was very important
for Matisse,

and for some of these other artists,
who were thinking so theoretically,

to find a way to connect
with nature,

and gardens provided
that opportunity.

For the Fauves artists, of course,
whose greatest contribution

to modern art was arbitrary colour,

they could be inspired
by the intensity of these tones,

and Matisse wrote evocatively
about that.

For Matisse, we know that
he did have a garden at his home,

he spent a lot of time in it.

We're told he greeted visitors
wearing a gardener's smock,

he would give them flowers
for presents,

he would use them for inspiration
and for setting colour theory.

And then, even into later life,

Matisse wrote that
when he was confined to his studio

or ill for some reason,

he would turn his studio
into a garden.

And you can see his studio
with these wild-growing,

sometimes exotic, plants
imported from Mexico.

And it was a constant source
of inspiration for him.

And even if you look
at the late paper cut-outs,

you can see these large paintings
of bushes and gardens

and plants and flowers.

And it was crucial for Matisse's
artistic inspiration,

and I also think
his spiritual and mental health.

There's a very close connection
between Monet the gardener

and Monet the painter,
and this painting of day lilies

is wonderful for the fact
that he has really captured

what the day lily is all about.

And there's something very vigorous
about this painting,

the way that you have this explosion
of leaves

that are so particular
to day lilies,

and then this suspense with the stem
that then supports the flower

that only blooms for a day,

and when it does,
it peels itself back facing the sky,

and absorbs all that light
in this brilliant moment,

this flash of orange
which he has then contrasted

against these cooler mauves
and greens behind,

so you get that flare
which happens with this plant

that's so absolutely particular
to that plant.

And I just love
how beautifully observed this is

and I can really feel how well
he's understood those plants

and how they've actually made
this part of his garden

into what it is,

it's probably why you go to
that particular part of the garden,

just to be there
with those day lilies

when they're doing their thing.

MAN AS MONET: "I have painted a lot
of these water lilies,

"modifying each time
my point of view,

"renewing the subject
following seasons of the year,

"and therefore,
following different luminous effects

"engendered by these changes."

"The effect varies incessantly."

"The essential of the subject
is the mirror of the water

"whose aspect, at any one time,
changes itself

"thanks to the expanses of sky
which reflect in it,

"and spreading life and movement."

"The passing cloud,
the freshening breeze,

"the threatening and falling rain,

"the sudden gust of wind,

"the light failing
and shining again."

"So many reasons,
elusive to the profane eye,

"which transform the tint
and disfigure the body of water."

This exhibition originated
with the desire to reunite

the three panels of Monet's
great Agapanthus triptych.

Monet, though,
never gave those paintings away

during his lifetime,
he kept them all in the studio.

He was constantly reworking them,

making them more abstract
and ethereal,

it's really amazing to see
an artist at his age

reworking these great masterworks.

And he died then in 1926,

and a selection of paintings
were taken off their stretchers,

moved to the Orangerie,

and literally glued
to the walls there.

But many of the great decorations
remained in the studio

and, in fact,
that's true of this triptych,

it remained with his family
until the 1950s

when the paintings
were sent to America

and bought separately by different
museums in the United States.

So reuniting this triptych
is a major event,

this is the first time
that we know of

it's ever happened in Europe,

and it's spectacular
to see them together.

And they made us
really think deeply about,

not only Monet's
great Agapanthus triptych,

but also about his interest
in gardening and painting gardens

because, of course, they depict
the great water garden at Giverny

which is one
of the great accomplishments

in the history of horticulture.

MAN AS MONET: "What I am becoming,
you can well imagine."

"I am working
and not without difficulty,

"because my sight diminishes
each day

"and, also,
I look after my garden a lot."

"This brings me pleasure, and
with the beautiful days we have had,

"I am overjoyed and admire nature."

"With this, we never have time
to be bored."

As Monet got older,
he became more concerned

with abstracting the world around us

and trying to look closer,
and closer and closer

at how colour was shaping,
in an abstract sense,

how we see the world.

So his series of paintings
of water lilies

are the most profound test
of him as an artist,

forcing himself to look...

And that is the hardest thing
about an artist,

the older you get, the more
you think you've looked enough

to know exactly
what's in front of you.

And as he considers
his great lily ponds here,

you notice through the series
of paintings

that his point of view begins
to move more and more and more away

from a recognisable subject,
away from a sense of a painting

receding into the distance
towards a horizon

where there is a neat little bridge
focusing your point of view,

and increasingly,
it's just about reflections,

patterns of light and colour.

But the more I work
into one of these paintings,

I become more and more intrigued
by the things that are appearing

in the reflections in the water.

And as Monet spent
more and more time here,

I guess that's what became
his passion.

He didn't need a bridge anymore,
he didn't need a tree trunk.

All he needed were ripples
and cascades of light,

and that's a real push
in the history of 20th century art

towards modernism.

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