In 1878 Monet went to live in the town of Vétheuil, west of Paris along the Seine. The town provided him with an escape from city life and an opportunity to cultivate the riverbank garden whose climbing nasturtiums he represented with swirls and splashes of orange in this composition. When a friend asked if he might visit Monet’s studio at Vétheuil, the artist retorted, “My studio! But I’ve never had one, and I don’t understand how anyone could shut themselves into a room—perhaps to draw but not to paint.”
