New impressions of flowering artistic genius

• The National Galleries of Scotland's main summer exhibition, Impressionist Gardens, has been made possible by loans of such works as Lotus Lilies by Charles Courtney Curran. Picture: Complimentary

The public can now judge for itself as the National Galleries of Scotland yesterday unveiled a groundbreaking international exhibition, Impressionist Gardens.

The highlight of the 2010 summer season is an exhibition of 97 paintings, including nine works by Claude Monet, detailing the various gardens he created, as well as works by Czanne, Renoir and post-Impressionists such as Vincent van Gogh.

For the first time an exhibition is dedicated to these artists' depiction of gardens, and it involves loans from art galleries and museums in America, France, Spain, Italy and Australia.

Gardens and flowers were a constant theme in impressionist painting and inspired these artists to produce some of their most memorable work.

Monet is perhaps best known for the garden he created in Giverny in rural Normandy, with its celebrated waterlily ponds. However, all Impressionists featured gardens in their work, ranging from Sisley's ordered views of market gardens to the wild profusion of Renoir's semi-cultivated garden, which adjoined his studio in Montmartre, and is depicted in his picture Woman with Parasol in a Garden (1875-76).

The famous names of Impressionism are well represented, with fine examples by Monet, Pissarro, Renoir, Manet and Sisley. The exhibition will also examine the continued significance of the garden to the generation of artists working immediately after the Impressionists, such as Czanne and Bonnard.

A final section will examine the spread of the Impressionist garden in the late-19th and early-20th centuries. European and American artists such as Van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, Gustav Klimt and John Singer Sargent will feature in this section.

To create the exhibition, the National Galleries secured the support of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, the Muse d'Orsay in Paris, the Staatsgalerie in Stuttgart and the Tate in London among others.

The curators of Impressionist Gardens have worked closely with staff at the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh to identify where possible the specific plants depicted.

Impressionist Gardens has been curated by Michael Clarke, director of the National Gallery of Scotland, and was inspired by Dr Clare Willsdon, reader in History of Art at Glasgow University and the author of In The Gardens of Impressionism. Five years ago she suggested the idea of the exhibition to Mr Clarke, who said it has taken four years to organise. "How the Impressionists painted, their use of bright colours etc, has often been studied, but what they actually painted has been skated over and it can tell a great deal about the painter and how affluent he was," he said.

The exhibition features works by lesser known painters, such as Frederic Bazille, a friend of Monet, to whom he lent money and paints, but who was killed in the Franco-Prussian war.

In addition, the exhibition aims to demonstrate how the Impressionists' passionate interest in gardening gave rise to some of the most memorable and significant paintings, and in doing so will offer an insight into a significant chapter in the history of horticulture. For the birth of Impressionism in France coincided with an explosion of enthusiasm for gardening, as a massive programme of urban renewal transformed Paris into a city of gardens. Impressionists were instinctively drawn to these new public spaces and treated parks as their studios.

Yesterday John Leighton, director-general of the National Galleries of Scotland, said: "Impressionist Gardens will be the big festival exhibition at the National Galleries of Scotland this year, and a highlight of our summer season.

"This is the first time that this fascinating subject has been the focus of a major exhibition and we are delighted to have secured some spectacular loans from collections around the world."

Duncan Macmillan - A golden opportunity to see old works in a new light

MONET was a great gardener.His garden at Giverny is justly famous and it was there that he established his lily ponds. Impressionist Gardens ends with a group of his wonderful waterlily pictures.

Monet gardened wherever he lived, but it seems many other artists of the Impressionist generation were also gardeners.

Nor was this true only in France. Impressionist Gardens ranges widely across Europe and America. The main-line French Impressionists, Monet, Manet, Renoir, Pissarro, Sisley and Czanne, are all here. There are even two great Van Goghs and a couple of lovely Bonnards. But there is work by artists from Austria, Germany, Italy and Spain as well as from America.

Many of these artists are unfamiliar. Who knows the work of Joaqun Sorolla y Bastida, for instance? I didn't, but he turns out to be a wonderful painter. Indeed, this is an exhibition for meeting artists whom you didn't know before and for seeing unfamiliar works. But you can also meet old friends in a new context, for there are even one or two Scots among the artists here. James Guthrie is there, for instance, and so is Arthur Melville with a wonderful cabbage patch in East Linton.

These artists painted all kinds of gardens: private, public, vegetable gardens, market gardens; though sometimes you wonder if what you are looking at is really a garden at all and not just a bit of countryside.

Gardens are for leisure, so there are people relaxing in the sunshine. In a picture by Manet they are even playing croquet. But then there is gardening as well, the whole business of horticulture.

There are cases displaying contemporary gardening books. You can see where Monet learned about the latest waterlilies imported from Japan. First plant your garden, then paint it seems to be the message.