Jean-Marie Toulgouat: Gardening Giverny

Even if you don’t know the name Jean-Marie Toulgouat, you’ll notice something immediately familiar about his work in this Garden Museum exhibition. That’s because Toulgouat was the great-grandson (by marriage) of the iconic Impressionist painter Claude Monet. Monet’s themes and colours seep into the oil paintings on show which capture Toulgout’s relationship to the landscapes of Giverny where he was born.

In the 1960’s Toulgouat was also heavily involved in restoring Monet’s gardens and you can see archival photographs of these green spaces that inspired some of the most famous paintings in the world captured by legendary garden photographer Andrew Lawson. Not only is the exhibition an unusual look into the life of Monet, it’s also an insight into how the water garden – one of the most well-known images in the world – was made.