Giverny's Garden

In 1883, Monet moved to Giverny and spent decades designing a garden specifically to paint. He diverted a stream, built a Japanese bridge, planted water lilies, and hired gardeners to maintain specific color arrangements. The garden was a living artwork — a three-dimensional painting he could walk through.

Across the haystack series, the same pile of straw shifts from warm gold to cool blue to fiery orange as the hours pass. That was Monet's larger point: color is never fixed. What we see depends entirely on when and how we look, so perception itself is unstable.