Around the time that Perry composed Cherry Blossoms, she began studying painting in France, where her relationship with Monet revolutionized her technique as an artist but did change her predominant responsibility as a mother and wife. In Paris in 1889, Perry was so dazzled by one of Monet’s works that she personally sought out the artist and for the next nine summers, her family rented a house right next to Monet’s famous garden at Giverny (Martindale 11). During these summer months, Perry studied beside the French master, experimenting especially with painting the Giverny landscapes “en plein air” (“Perry, Lilla Cabot”). As we have seen with Alice in the Lane Monet instilled his own love for garden scenes in Perry, and tried to convey his empirical and natural approach to painting. Perry recalls how Monet once proclaimed that her “forte was ‘plein air’, figures out of doors” and urged her to paint more landscapes (qtd. Feld). The American mother took up many of his suggestions, due to their sharp contrast to the academic/classical doctrines she had learned in the Academies of Paris (“Perry, Lilla Cabot”). However, it is worth mentioning that while in Giverny, Perry remained with her family, and split her time between painting and childrearing. Stuart Feld writes for Lilla Cabot Perry: an Retrospective Exhibtion about those times: “She remained devoted to her family and, although she maintained the highest standards of her profession, she painted essentially for her own satisfaction” (Feld). Although Perry’s artistic approach was significantly formulated under the influence of Monet, Felt here suggests she never had the kind of artistic freedom to leave her personal obligations; art and family were inseparable. In this light, it is not at all surprising that even in the years after leaving Giveny, Perry chose to paint a familiar theme and association, one that she had introduced in her poetry: the connection between flowers and women.
Image: A photograph taken by Perry of Monet’s Giverny Gardens. 1905-6, Archive of American Art.