White Clematis

Monet's 'White Clematis' (1887) is among his most intimate botanical subjects — the climbing vine painted at Giverny where his celebrated garden was beginning to take shape. Clematis was one of the plants he cultivated in the garden he was gradually developing, and his paintings of specific garden plants preceded the large-scale water garden project by nearly a decade. The clematis's white flowers against their dark foliage provided a subject of naturalistic observation combined with the decorative interest that would characterize his later flower subjects.

Monet renders the clematis's white blossoms with the Impressionist discovery that white in nature is never purely white — the flowers receive reflected sky color, shadow from adjacent leaves, and the warm tones of direct sunlight in ways that give them complex chromatic identity. His handling builds the flowers through varied marks of different colors that resolve into white at viewing distance. The dark foliage behind provides the contrast that makes the white blossoms luminous.