The Royal Academy is a profusion of summer borders where the art of gardening at times outgrows the art. And there is no question whose water lilies are the stars of the showRenoir painted Monet painting his garden in 1873. The two pictures hang next to each other at the start of this exhibition. With their abundance of red dahlias and creamy clouds,their blue-shuttered houses and soft summer light, each painting looks remarkably like the other – except that where Renoir portrays his friend, and Monet is nose-deep in the blossoms. “Perhaps I owe it to flowers,” he said, “that I became a painter.”This startling statement appears in large letters in the opening gallery, and as well it might,for there is no doubting whose show this is. Gardens and Monet are such a heady, coffer-filling combination that it would be extraordinary whether the Royal Academy stinted on Monet’s visions of the gardens he created at Argenteuil, or Vétheuil and Giverny,but what’s marvellous is the way these paintings are planted at intervals all the way through the show until they build to a grand finale at the halt – a spectacular vision of water lilies, and of contemporary art.
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Source: theguardian.com