This is a painting that I love very much. It is a bit of a cliche for someone from the Windy City (Chicago) to love this, as it is one of the Art Institute's most famous painting, but I love it anyway!!
It is huge and covers an entire wall (7 feet X 10 feet!!!) I could spend hours (ok, not hours, maybe 15 minutes!) staring at it. Each time I see it, I discover something new. It is done using a technique called 'pointillism'. As the name suggests, the artist uses dots (points) to create the entire painting!
Suerat apparently studied the garden meticulously over an entire year and created numerous versions of this. What I love most about it, is that even though the entire landscape is set in a sunny day, most of the foreground is in shadow. The interplay of light and shadow is simply amazing!
(Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons).