The Villas in Bordighera
Architecture, palm trees and Italian light compete for the foreground. At Monet, the villas do not dominate the garden: they appear in fragments in the middle of almost magical vegetation.
A three-week trip that became almost three monthsWhat The Villas in Bordighera ?
The Villas in Bordighera is a large decorative panel painted by Claude Monet in 1884 and kept at the Musée d'Orsay. It represents a profusion of palm trees, agaves and flowers around villas on the Ligurian Riviera. The canvas, almost square, measures 116.5 × 136.5 cm.
Contrary to what its outdoor brilliance suggests, this large version is executed in Giverny's studio, according to a smaller study painted on site and now kept at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. Monet intended the panel for Berthe Morisot's living room. The painting therefore combines direct observation of Bordighera with decorative work constructed after the return.
The title can also designate other compositions made during the same stay. Some show the Moreno garden, others the Villa Garnier, the Villa Etelinda or the ancient town in the distance. We must therefore not reduce the "villas" to a single specific building.
Two Villas, two functions
The comparison of the two works explains Monet's process: capturing the motif on site, then enlarging and organizing it so that it functions as a decor in an interior.
The study painted in Bordighera
The horizontal format maintains the momentum of a session in front of the landscape. The villas and mountains remain readable, while the plants organize an oblique entrance towards the bottom.
Another villa, another framing
The central palm tree shares the image between the tower of Villa Etelinda, on the left, and the bell tower of Santa Maria Maddalena in the old town. The architecture serves as a landmark in the middle of the garden.
Larger and almost square, it amplifies the plant abundance and affirms a decorative ambition.
Their more manageable format allows Monet to move his easel and test several relationships between villas and plants.
Architecture is never isolated: walls, towers and balconies appear through a screen of branches, flowers and palm fronds.
Villa Garnier, Villa Etelinda and old town
Bordighera developed as a resort in the 19th century. The white and ocher villas are set in subtropical gardens, while the ancient city retains its bell tower and its houses huddled on the height.
The Villa Garnier
The architect Charles Garnier, author of the Paris Opera, had his villa built in Bordighera from 1871. Its tower and terraces dominate a garden where Mediterranean species and plants from elsewhere mingle.
The city behind the pines
Monet refuses the easy panoramic view. The gnarled trunks cut through the landscape, hide part of the sea and relegate the houses to the background.
An architecture opened by loggias and closely associated with its garden.
Its tower appears in several compositions and often responds to the distant bell tower.
The bell tower identifies the silhouette of Bordighera alta without becoming the main subject.
The Moreno Gardens
Monet gained access to Francesco Moreno's property in February 1884. He described to Alice Hoschedé an incomparable garden, where all the plants seem to grow freely and where the varieties of palm trees form a tangle difficult to paint.
The painted garden
The agaves point towards the bell tower, the palm fronds divide the sky and the flowers burst into small touches. The eye must pass through several plant layers before reaching the architecture.
The historic garden
The old photograph confirms the extent of the botanical decoration. The property has largely disappeared, but Bordighera has created Claude Monet gardens on part of its former location.
Filtered light
The gray trunks cut through a cold undergrowth. The red and orange touches on the ground show that the Mediterranean light is not reduced to a bright blue sky.
The garden as material
In this vertical format, the foliage occupies almost everything. The fruits become yellow and orange accents which punctuate a mass of greens, blues and purples.
Why this vegetation changes Monet's painting
Accustomed to poplars, apple trees and Norman gardens, Monet encountered new silhouettes. Palms, agaves and lemon trees impose more nervous lines and more lively contrasts.
Palm trees open the bay
From the vicinity of his hotel, Monet looks towards Ventimiglia Bay and the Alps. Dark fronds frame a horizon made of pinks, blues and mauves.
The bell tower in the palm trees
The vegetation forms a competing architecture. Palm trees are irregular columns; the bell tower is just an additional vertical in the colorful mist.
The countryside rather than the resort
Monet leaves the elegant villas for a modest farm. However, the palm trees and mountains maintain the feeling of a territory very different from Normandy.
The sky, sea and mountains build a cold depth.
Monet dares to use roses in the air, reliefs and walls heated by the sun.
Olive, emerald, turquoise or gray: vegetation never has a single color.
Flowers, fruits and solar reflections serve as accents in the foliage.
A road without a postcard
The main route of the villas could call for a worldly scene. Monet, on the contrary, chooses an almost empty road, where the light and the gardens are enough to tell the story of the Italian resort.
Strada Romana
The road divides, lined with flowers and shrubs. The mountain closes the perspective while a large palm tree immediately indicates the climate.
The historic road
This ancient photograph reveals a more constructed and social path. Monet eliminates passers-by and simplifies details to focus the eye on the color of the path and gardens.
From the villa to the valley
The living room does not produce a series with a fixed framing. Monet walks, climbs heights and moves inwards in order to confront the same palette with very different spaces.
A cluttered depth
In the Villas, the foreground is filled with agaves and flowers. The gaze does not easily enter the picture: it must cross the vegetation before reaching the architecture and the mountain.
This slowing down gives the garden its decorative density. The viewer does not contemplate the place from the outside; it seems placed in the middle of the leaves.
The almost hidden subject
In the view of Chicago, the twisted pines form a screen. Bordighera and the sea remain in the intervals, as a promise of landscape rather than a descriptive panorama.
Monet thus chooses two different obstacles: the profusion of the garden in the Villas, then the graphic interweaving of the trunks on the height.
The Nervia valley
A few kilometers from the coast, the sea disappears. The mountain, the village of Dolceacqua and the valley expand Monet's Italian experience. The same pinks and blues are now used to make the terrain, distance and air dry.
This excursion shows that Bordighera is less of a single subject than a base camp. Villas, palm trees, roads, villages and mountains belong to a common research on a light deemed almost impossible to match with ordinary pigments.
How Monet transforms the Riviera
After a first stint with Renoir in December 1883, Monet returned in January to work freely and intensely.
It alternates private gardens, roads, hills, coast and valley rather than immediately exhausting a single framing.
The light imposes more pinks, blues, yellows and pure greens on him than in his northern landscapes.
The large panel of Orsay takes up an Italian study and transforms the sensation of travel into lasting decor.
Three decisive months in 1884
Monet discovered the Riviera with Renoir and considered Bordighera one of the most beautiful places of the trip.
He returns alone and settles at the Pension Anglaise for a campaign that he initially imagines to be very short.
It accesses the Moreno gardens, explores the Via Romana, the palm groves, the heights and the Nervia valley.
Exhausted by rhythm and light, he returned to France with several dozen paintings and took up Morisot's panel.
In Bordighera, Monet does not place a villa in a garden: he lets the garden invade the architecture and transform light into a subject.
Find Bordighera in the store
The available compositions cover the four main faces of the living room: the villa sign, the Moreno garden, the palm trees and the Italian road.
Villas in Bordighera
The large Mediterranean garden where towers, villas, agaves and flowers respond to each other in clear light.
See reproductionAnother version of the Villas
A different framing to compare the place of the palm tree, the bell tower and the architecture of Bordighera.
See reproductionThe Palm Trees in Bordighera
An open view of the bay, dominated by dark fronds and pink and blue mountains.
See reproductionMoreno Garden
A dense composition where the old town emerges behind agaves, palm trees and flowers.
See reproductionVillas in Bordighera in 10 answers
When did Monet paint Les Villas in Bordighera?
Monet studied in Bordighera during his stay from January to April 1884. The large panel kept at the Musée d'Orsay was then painted or completed in the Giverny workshop.
Where is the main board located?
The big sign The Villas in Bordighera is kept at the Musée d'Orsay in Paris. A smaller study belongs to the Santa Barbara Museum of Art.
Why did Monet go to Bordighera?
After discovering the Riviera with Renoir in December 1883, he wanted to return alone to bring back new motifs and face the Mediterranean light.
How many paintings did Monet paint during this trip?
Sources generally mention around forty-five works sent after the campaign, and often around fifty paintings linked more broadly to the stay on the Riviera.
Which villa do we see in the painting?
The title covers several views. Depending on the composition, we recognize the Moreno garden, the Villa Garnier, the tower of Villa Etelinda and the bell tower of Santa Maria Maddalena.
Was the Orsay painting painted entirely on site?
No. The Musée d'Orsay specifies that it was executed in Giverny according to a study of smaller dimensions painted in Bordighera.
Who did Monet make the big panel for?
He intended it for the living room of Berthe Morisot, impressionist painter and friend of Monet. The work then belonged to his daughter Julie Manet.
What was Moreno Garden?
It was a famous botanical property of Bordighera, remarkable for the diversity of its palm trees and exotic plants. Monet described it as an "earthly paradise".
Why are the colors so bright?
Monet seeks to make a light harder and more colorful than that of northern France. It increases pinks, blues, yellows and greens, while avoiding black shadows.
How does Bordighera announce Monet's series?
The resumption in the workshop of a pattern studied on site and the multiplication of close views foreshadow his future method: comparing several versions to deepen the same effect.
Sources and credits
- Musée d'Orsay - The Villas in Bordighera
- Art Institute of Chicago - Bordighera
- Art Institute of Chicago, scientific catalog - Monet in Bordighera
- Metropolitan Museum of Art - Palm Trees at Bordighera
- Museum Barberini - Villas at Bordighera
- Museum Barberini - Strada Romana in Bordighera
- Bordighera tourist office - Claude Monet in Bordighera
- Wikimedia Commons - historical photograph of Villa Garnier
- Wikimedia Commons - old photograph of Moreno Gardens
- Library of Congress /Wikimedia Commons - Via Romana
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Works by Claude Monet reproduced as works in the public domain. Historical photographs are used in accordance with the licensing information indicated on their source pages. Editorial text: Alpha Reproduction.
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