Amazon.com Review
Bill Laws, a professional gardener and a renowned horticultural writer, has created a rich and visually arresting compendium beautifully describing the relationship between a number of artists and their local landscapes. There has always been a dialogue between art and nature, and in
Artists' Gardens we see the personal source of some of these conversations in the gardens of 20 important artists, including Renoir, Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, and Frida Kahlo. Each chapter is arranged around an artist and his or her natural environs, showing the intimate relationship at work therein.
Much of Renoir's later life was spent struggling away in his garden at Les Collettes on the French Riviera. Three days before he died, he was doggedly working on a still life of apples from his own trees. Monet's famous paintings show the pleasures he took from his Giverny home. The more formal personal sculpture park of Carl Milles, the "Rubens of modern sculptors," and Henry Moore's huge primal pieces at Hoglands in Hertfordshire need their contexts as certainly as Barbara Hepworth's bold, sensual figures in her more isolated home in St. Ives in Cornwall.
With reproductions of the artists' paintings set alongside some startling photography, Bill Laws has produced a book that gives genuine insight into the work of some key artists and their gardens that's an absolute pleasure to look through and to read. --Nicola Hollins
From Library Journal
Professional gardener Laws (Traditional Houses of Rural Spain) explores the links among artists, their work, and their gardens by presenting the gardens of 20 painters and sculptors, from old masters (like Peter Paul Rubens) to contemporary artists (Jennifer Bartlett), from the well-known (Claude Monet) to the unfamiliar (Kim Ondaatje). This oversize book works best when providing overviews of artists' careers and their gardens (which are lavishly displayed in many full-page color illustrations); analysis of the artists' work and their garden designs is weak. Although not a scholarly study--only a brief reading list is included, with no bibliographical references--this book does fill a gap in the literature at a very reasonable price. Recommended for large public and academic libraries.
-Daniel Starr, Museum of Modern Art, New York Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
