Study Abroad Students Visit Monet's House and Gardens in Giverny

Students enrolled in the Arcadia study abroad summer progarm at AGS in Paris took a day-trip to Giverny in Normandy, where they visited Claude Monet's house, now a museum, and the magnificent gardens around it which inspired many of Monet's most famous paintings.

Students were able to tour the house where Monet lived for 43 years until his death in 1926. The house and artist workshop were preserved to look the same as they did at the time the painter and his family lived there. Many of the painter's personal objects are displayed, as well as his collection of Japanese prints. The students could also visit the flower garden ("Clos Normand") and water garden ("Jardin d'Eau") which Monet - who was a gardening passionate and once said "It may be because of flowers that I've become a painter" - had arranged the way he would have arranged an impressionist painting: finely arranging the composition, colors and perspectives.

"One of the most amazing parts of the visit was the waterlily gardens that are pictured in many of Monet's paintings. We have two Art History Majors in the group were particularly excited with the visit as they got to see for real what they have studied in the classroom." says AGS study abroad coordinator Jennifer Wright.

This field trip was organized as one of the cultural extra-curricular activities in their six-week summer program in Intensive French and Politics organized with Arcadia University's College of Global Studies. See more about that program.