Impressionists are inspired greatly by nature and use the elements, such as seasons and sunlight to create an atmosphere to express the feelings of the painting itself.
This particular garden is set in Sainte-Adresse estate near Le Havre where he stayed for a while as a child. The estate belonged to Monet's cousin and so he had a natural connection to it.
Monet was greatly inspired by the garden of Sainte-Adresse and created several paintings centered around this location. Woman in the Garden displays a woman dressed contemporarily in whites, layers and patterns along with a matching parasol.
The actual woman is Monet's cousin's wife and Monet uses her as a muse for the painting. Despite how bright, green and colourful the scene is, the lone lady is almost sorrowful and isolated in comparison. With her face turned away, she seems idle in the beautiful garden. The garden itself is blooming with colour and the tall trees stretch up to constrast against the sky.
Monet also created a very similarly named painting called Women in the Garden when he was as young as 27. This was a harder challenge for Monet by far. Created a year before, Monet's aim was to create movement around the figures in the garden by painting the air and light as if it moved around the women rather than the other way round.
Monet achieved this by creating shadows and light with the use of paint, and utilising sunshine to shine through areas of shadow as well as making use of the trees and hedges. Similar to Woman in the Garden, these women are dresses in white beautiful dresses. These dresses are effected by light itself. The shadows portions the dresses and the sunshine almost seems to reflect off of the fabric itself.
The dresses are definitely the centrepiece of the painting and strike against the greens of the garden surrounding the women. The faces of these women have no particular detail to them as it is about the movements of the fabrics and how the lights and shadows create movements around them.
The Woman in the Garden wore fashionable, contemporary clothing and Monet made sure to do the same a year before. Instead of painting several models dressed in these fine dresses, he finished the painting inside and used references from modern magazines to simulate fashionable outfits for the women in the garden.
Monet used his traditional technique of brushstrokes that are visible to the eye which gives the painting a texture and movement. Though a beautiful work of art, it was not appreciated immensely in its time due to the impressionist style used.
