Monet: The Late Years Exhibit, and Revisiting DSH Perfumes Le Jardin Vert and La Danse les Bleus et des Violettes

Weeping Willow and Water-Lily Pond, 1916-19

The Kimbell Museum in Fort Worth, Texas,  is in the last days of a special exhibit featuring Monet's works from the later years of his life. During this time he based himself in Giverny, and idyllic spot for sure, but Monet's happiness was impinged by the loss of his wife and son, the cloud of WWI, and then his declining vision. It was during this period that he experimented on large canvases, using his own garden as an inspiration.

Dawn Spencer Hurwitz designed a line of fragrances several years ago when the Denver Art Museum had an exhibit on Monet, and she named the four-fragrance set Giverny In Bloom. I wrote about these when I first started blogging, and though I loved them all, Giverny In Bloom, which I wrote about here was the one that appealed to me most, with its joyful combination of greens and florals. At the Monet: The Early Years exhibit, however, it was Le Jardin Vert and La Danse les Bleus et des Violettes  that really spoke to me through the paintings. 

It was fascinating to wear these perfumes in the presence of these great masterpieces. I could imagine Dawn, who is herself an artist and has synesthesia, the ability to experience scent as color, feeling immersed in the dark moody greens of the willow trees in Giverny's garden and the inky blue depths of the pool. Although La Danse les Bleus et des Violettes was a reflection on some of the blooming flowers at Giverny, I also found the blueness of the scent conveyed in the watery reflective surface of the lily pond. 

Le Jardin Vert is such an immersive experience with its vegetal notes which make it feel like a study in dark green. It embraces the green of the trees and plant life, but also the rather slimy plants that line the pond and the mossy bits on the rocks. The scent has moments where it smells wet and with just a whisper of decay, which is where the vegetal smells come in. Then it is uplifted by watery notes or fleeting floral whispers. At its heart, though, the scent is deep and dark with notes of moss, minerals, and woods. Le Jardin Vert is a living thing on my skin, shape shifting and dancing, like a dragonfly flitting from one part of the garden to another, constantly moving and changing. Wearing this scent I felt like I could deep dive into the large canvas before me.

La Danse les Bleus et des Violettes  was created to reference the blue flowers in Monet's garden, and it does that beautifully. But looking at these paintings featuring Monet's lily pond, I found the scent gives an ethereal blue haze and projects calmness and placidity, just like the tranquility found staring at the lily pond's surface.

The Kimbell Museum has the exhibit set up in such a way that you cross an inner land bridge to get from the large paintings to the darker, smaller canvases painted in the last years of Monet's life. Cataracts had made his vision deteriorate, and the colors in his painting took on a darker and muddier hue. The painting above is still fairly recognizable as the willow tree and the pond, but as time went on the blues and greens gave way to oranges and browns. The exhibit is a fascinating walk through the last years of the great artist's life.

Photos of the Monet exhibit at the Kimbell Museum Fort Worth taken by me. Perfumes are my own.