Gardens and Imagination: Framing Nature in Art

Artistic representations of gardens across history, cultures and mediums, featuring work by such disparate artists as Hokusai, Claude Monet and Hilary Pecis

A plot of land, a relaxing retreat, a formal landscape, a place of work: gardens carry a range of associations for individuals, communities and cultures alike. Spanning from the ancient Mediterranean to Renaissance Europe to the Edo period in Japan to the Qing dynasty in China to today, Gardens and Imagination considers how gardens have remained a source of artistic inspiration for millennia. Drawn from the holdings of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, this lush volume features both iconic representations of gardens as well as undersung depictions across a range of mediums, eras and cultures. Thematically organized, Gardens and Imagination features essays that probe the human impulse to influence, master and celebrate the natural world through cultivation, care and labor--all while exploring how countless artists have translated this phenomenon into their own visual aesthetics.
Artists include: Ansel Adams, Ruth Bernhard, William Blake, Karl Blossfeldt, Lilla Cabot Perry, Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, Lois Conner, Nancy Crasco, Jan Cornelisz, Elizabeth Courtis, Gregory Crewdson, Imogen Cunningham, Gohar Dashti, Maria Richards Oakey Dewing, Jim Dine, Christian Dior, Claudio Eshun, Gisèle Freund, Wanda Gág, Agostino Gallo, Jay Lynn Gomez, Anthony Green, Katsushika Hokusai, Graciela Iturbide, Robert John Thornton, Justin Kimball, Salomon Kleiner, Tom Loeser, Dakota Mace, Kimathi Mafafo, Mary Mattingly, Michael Mazur, Asnaku Melese, Jean-François Millet, Claude Monet, May Morris, William Morris, Vik Muniz, Giovanni di Paolo, Hilary Pecis, Andrew Raftery, Yves Saint Laurent, John Singer Sargent, Marjorie Schick, Linda Threadgill, Edouard Vuillard, Barbara Westman, Yuan Yao, and many more.