L'orangerie

L’orangerie / Monet

Every art textbook I had ever been forced to read surrounded me. Renoir was to my left, Monet the floor above me and Picasso just in the next room, I was completely enclosed by some of the most influential pieces of art that had ever existed on the face of the earth. I feel small and weak, but still drawn to walk as close as I could to every painting. I would look at the brush strokes and watch the colors mixing like they were still being painted right in front of me at that exact moment.
The French could not have picked a better place to put their most prized artists and most loved paintings. Not even the Louvre could compete with L’orangerie. It was beautiful and known in the past as the place where the royal family would store their orange trees during the cold winters. The rooms were wide open and full of light, but no glare on any of Monet’s Water Lilly Paintings.
Each Water Lilly paining was about twenty feet long and about four feet high. I felt inclined to move myself back and forth up and down each painting looking at the amazing color and fusions that Monet had masterminded. I felt so stunned and awed that as soon as I saw all of the paintings I thought, these were probably one of the main reasons modern contemporary art was ever invented, because the power of these painting were so awesome, that I felt confused, scared, and yet safe and calm the entire time I spent in L’orangerie.
Later that day we traveled to Monet’s Garden in Giverny. No matter how hard I try I will never be able to say what I experienced there, but I can try anyway. As soon as we got off of the bus, we walked to and underpass that lead to his house and garden. We entered by the gardens and it was filled with endless rows of the most beautiful flowers known to man. It was a giant collage of different colors, vibrant ones mixed right next to dull and pastel colors. There were big flowers in between the tiger lilies and bouquets of daisies and hydrangeas.
The beauty that is Monet’s pond only silenced his enormous, hidden, immaculate garden. I had never known that it was man made and that the lilies were brought from Japan and all over the world and put into a man made pond in a small town a few hours north of France. Each lily pad had a beautiful reddish pink bulb in the middle flowering and blossoming unlike anything I had ever seen. They melted into the water, and dissolved into the mixture of water, sun, and plants. The water looked like one of Monet’s paintings, broken up by the water lilies, but a fusion of all the colors of the season, and daylight. The ripples and flow of the water resembled the brushstrokes and style of his immense paintings. The small Japanese bridge transcended over the water and floated peacefully on top of the pond. The bridge put the whole landscape together and simply complemented the pond, garden, and water lilies.