Thursday, November 5, 2026

Pleasure Gardens

Lodewijk Toeput (Ludovico Pozzoserrato)
Pleasure Garden with Maze
ca. 1579-84
oil on canvas (from the collection of Charles I)
Royal Collection, Great Britain


Anonymous Persian Artist
Athletes in a Garden
18th century
gouache and tempera on paper
Milwaukee Art Museum, Wisconsin

Camille Pissarro
Jardin des Mathurins, Pontoise
1876
oil on canvas
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri

Frits Thaulow
Summer Day in the Garden
1880
oil on panel
Lillehammer Kunstmuseum, Norway

Aukusti Uotila
Spring in the Tuileries Garden
1880
oil on canvas
private collection

Vincent van Gogh
Terrace in the Luxembourg Gardens
1886
oil on canvas
Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts

Auguste Renoir
Garden at Château des Brouillards, Montmartre
1895
oil on canvas
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Henry Edward Tidmarsh
The Public Garden
ca. 1910
watercolor on paper
private collection

Leo Gestel
Garden, Mallorca
1914
oil on canvas
Kunstmuseum, The Hague

Laurits Regner Tuxen
Rhododendron in the artist's garden
1917
oil on canvas
Skagens Museum, Denmark

Eliseu Visconti
Girls in the Garden
1935
oil on canvas
Museu Nacional de Belas Artes, Rio de Janeiro

Carl Robert Holty
Woman in a Garden
1955
oil on canvas
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC

Peter Fink
Garden - Pittsfield, New York
ca. 1965
C-print
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Joan Fontcuberta
The Costa-Llobera Garden, Montjuic, Barcelona
1984
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Susan Wilson
Garden in the Snow, Fenton House, Hampstead
1987
oil on canvas
National Trust, Fenton House

Jonas Wood
Japanese Garden
2017
oil and acrylic on canvas
private collection

Michael Zavros
Summer Garden with a Z
2021
oil on canvas
private collection

from Judging Distances

Not only how far away, but the way that you say it
Is very important. Perhaps you may never get
The knack of judging a distance, but at least you know
How to report on a landscape: the central sector,
The right of arc and that, which we had last Tuesday,
            And at least you know

That maps are of time, not place, so far as the army
Happens to be concerned – the reason being,
Is one which need not delay us. Again, you know
There are three kinds of tree, three only, the fir and the poplar,
And those which have bushy tops to; and lastly
            That things only seem to be things.

– Henry Reed (1942)