Jardin à Giverny
by Lilla Cabot Perry

Born 1848, in Boston; died 1933.

Painter. Portraits, genre scenes.
Lilla Cabot Perry was born into a very well-known family in Boston, and in 1874 married the teacher Thomas Sergeant Perry. She was the pupil of Dennis Miller Bunker and of Robert W. Vonnoh at the Cowles Art School in Boston and, in 1886 in Paris, of the Académies Colarossi and Julian, as was also Alfred Stevens, and from 1888, Monet. She travelled in Japan. She was a member of the American Federation of the Arts and of the Société des Artistes Indépendants in Paris. She won a silver medal at Boston in 1892. During a period of more than 20 years, she spent nine summers at Giverny with her family. She lived in the house adjoining that of Monet at Giverny and they became friends. She made his works known in Boston, and publicised the Impressionists in general in the USA. It was she who encouraged her young fellow citizens of America to go and study in France and particularly at Giverny. In 1927 she published a book of memoirs on her friendship with Monet. The house of Lilla Cabot Perry was bought by the Fondation Terra, which later arranged the construction in the village of a museum dedicated to American painters influenced by Impressionism, opened in 1992.

Group Exhibitions

2001, The Heroic and the Everyday: American Artists, 1820-1920 (L'Héroïque et le quotidien: les artistes américains, 1820-1920), Museum of American Art, Giverny (with a picture entitled Japanese Garden)
2001, A Studio of her Own: Women Artists in Boston, 1870-1940, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
2008, Portrait of a Lady: Paintings and Photographs of American Women in France 1870-1915, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Bordeaux

Solo Exhibitions

1990, Lilla Cabot Perry: an American Impressionist, National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington DC

Museum and Gallery Holdings

Boston (MFA): Open Air Concert (1890, oil on canvas); A Young Violoncellist (1892, oil on canvas)
Cambridge, MA (Fogg AM, Harvard University): The Trio, Tokyo, Japan (1898-1901, oil on canvas); Mt. Fuji with Gravestones (1901, oil on canvas)
Chicago (Terra Foundation for American Art Collection): Self portrait (c. 1891); Japanese Garden (Japan) (c. 1900, oil on canvas); By the Brook, Giverny, France (woman in pink dress) (1909, oil on canvas); The Green Hat (1913, oil on canvas); Autumn Afternoon, Giverny (oil on canvas)
Los Angeles (County MA): A Cup of Tea (oil on canvas)
Vernon (Mus. Alphonse-Georges Poulain): A boat on the Epte at Giverny (oil on canvas)
Washington DC (Nat. Mus. of Women in the Arts): Portrait of Elsa Tudor (c. 1898, oil on canvas); Lady With a Bowl of Violets (c. 1910, oil on canvas); Lady in an Evening Dress (Renée) (1911, oil on canvas)