PUBLIC PARKS, PRIVATE GARDENS: PARIS TO PROVENCE by Colta Ives

Yale University Press, £40 ISBN 978-1588395849

Companion volume to an exhibition at the Met in New York, focused on the 19th-century development of Paris’s public parks and squares.

Ignore the dull title – this book makes one understand just how important parks and gardens came to be to several generations of French artists during the second half of the 19th century. The stars of the show, inevitably, are the likes of Monet, Manet, Renoir and Degas, but – gratifyingly – the author spends just as much time on lesser-known figures.

The longest and most original section of the book is effectively a commentary on the redevelopment of Paris by Baron Haussmann in the mid 19th century (three new parks, 24 squares and miles of treelined boulevards) and how contemporary artists reacted to it. One of the most memorable paintings is a Parisian street scene by Gustave Caillebotte – viewed from directly above, through the branches of a tree.

Caillebotte, a close friend of Monet’s, was an expert gardener with a mania for chrysanths whose work betrays all the instincts of an observant practical gardener. The work of American painter Mary Cassatt is also shown to fine effect – her study of lilacs seems to live and breathe – while it is also good to see the sumptuous floral still lifes of Henri FantinLatour given their due.

It is also interesting to come across the work of early photographers such as Gustave Le Gray, who in the 1850s and 1860s produced images of the Forest of Fontainebleau. These complement the paintings of the Barbizon School, whose en plein air techniques so impressed the Impressionists.

While Paris dominates the narrative, there are exceptions, such as the discussion of Van Gogh’s interest in the new public garden at Arles, which he painted repeatedly. He used the canvases to decorate his friend Gaugin’s room when he came to visit – though as we know, that particular episode did not end well.