Featuring examples from Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum’s rich collection of French Impressionist paintings of flowers and the natural environment, this talk will consider the inspiration for Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, Sisley, Cassatt and their colleagues of parks and private gardens, as well as of cultivated and wild nature in rural contexts. It will explore the role of the so-called ‘great horticultural movement’ at this period, that saw the sensory effects of gardens and cultivated landscapes enriched with thousands of newly introduced or newlybred flowers and plants. It will also consider how this combined with wider social and cultural developments to make gardens, meadows, fields and cut flowers central to the ‘modern life’ subject-matter that the Impressionists made distinctively their own.
Professor Clare A. P. Willsdon is Professor of the History of Western Art, University of Glasgow Prof. Willsdon was educated at Girton College, University of Cambridge, and has taught at the University of Glasgow for many years, serving as Head of History of Art from 2022-25. Her research focuses on cross-disciplinary approaches to Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, Symbolism, and mural painting. Key publications include Mural Painting in Britain 1840-1940: Image and Meaning (OUP, 2000, awarded the ‘Historians of British Art’ prize), In the Gardens of Impressionism (Thames & Hudson, 2004 and 2016, nominated for the Saltire Society/National Library of Scotland ‘Research Book of the Year’, 2005 and Sir Bannister Fletcher ‘Best Book in the Arts’, 2006), and Impressionist Gardens (Thames & Hudson 2010).
She has also collaborated with galleries for exhibitions, including as Academic Adviser for Impressionist Gardens (National Gallery of Scotland/Museo Thyssen-Bornemizsa Madrid 2010-11); Curatorial Consultant for Painting the Modern Garden (Cleveland Museum of Art/Royal Academy of Arts, London, 2015-16); and Co-curator for Country Gardens, Broadway, UK, 2012 and Bright Edge Deep: Exploring the Cultural and Scientific Life of Peatlands (https://brightedgedeep.arts.gla.ac.uk/, 2021). Her exhibition work also includes contributions to Gartenlust, Belvedere, Vienna 2007, Renoir, Complesso Vittoriano, Rome, 2008, and Monet at the Munch Museum, Oslo, 2027.
Other collaborations include the book Whistler and Nature (with Patricia de Montfort, Merrell Holberton, 2018) and three related conferences (including Whistler, Nature and Science, Cambridge and Glasgow, 2019, https://www.gla.ac.uk/whistler/nature-and-science/), and she has recently worked with the Burrell Collection on Degas (https://www.gla.ac.uk/schools/cca/research/arthistoryresearch/discoveringdegas/. Forthcoming outputs include chapters for Impressionism across Fields (Musée d’Orsay/Paris University), James McNeill Whistler’s Reception and Artistic Legacy (Routledge 2026); George Mayer-Marton (Liverpool UP, 2006); and Monet (Munch Museum, 2027).
Prof. Willsdon has given many papers, lectures and talks, including her online series on the history of parks and public health in Glasgow (https://deargreenbothy.gla.ac.uk/event/greening-glasgow/). Media contributions include those for Radio Deutsche Welle, Radio 4, and Exhibition on Screen (Painting the Modern Garden, 2016 and Van Gogh, 2021).