JUDITH BUMPUS

This book brings together a selection of Impressionist paintings of gardens and flowers, a favourite and richly developed subject of artists including Monet, Renoir, Pissarro and Sisley. The Impressionists, with their approach to rendering outdoor effects and fleeting atmospheric conditions, captured the sunlit colour, mood and almost the smell of flower gardens. In doing so, they registered a new public sensibility: the love, not just of fresh air and greenery, but also of gloriously colourful settings on a domestic scale. For indeed, some of the best-loved works are of their own and their friends' gardens, such as Monet's garden at Giverny. This book is a celebration of both art and nature.

This fully-illustrated examination of Van Gogh's preoccupation with painting flowers draws upon the artist's own letters to describe his subject matter and to show the extraordinary importance that flowers and plants had on his life and his work.