Claude Monet: Bed of Chrysanthemums, 1897 – Porcelain Art Mug

No sky, no path, no edge of the garden: Monet looks straight down into a bed of chrysanthemums and lets it fill the whole canvas. Pink and white heads crowd against deep red and ragged yellow ones, and between them the leaves turn into dark pools of green and blue. The picture has no single point to rest on; the eye wanders across it the way it wanders across a carpet.

It is one of four chrysanthemum paintings Monet made in the autumn of 1897, probably in his own garden at Giverny, and showed the following June at the Galerie Georges Petit in Paris. The critic Gustave Geffroy, reviewing that exhibition, spoke of an "effet de tapisserie" — a tapestry effect. The flat, all-over surface points ahead to the water lilies, which Monet would paint in the same close-up way for the rest of his life.

Look at the lower left corner of the mug: the orange strokes there hold Monet's signature and the date, "Claude Monet 97", exactly as he painted them.

Fine porcelain, 10 oz — 104 mm high, 75 mm across the base. The image runs around the body; handle and rim stay white. Dishwasher and microwave safe.

From the same series: Woman with a Parasol, 1875 · Stacks of Wheat, 1890–91

Claude Monet, Bed of Chrysanthemums (Massif de chrysanthèmes), 1897; oil on canvas, 81.7 × 100.5 cm. Kunstmuseum Basel, deposit of the Dr. h.c. Emile Dreyfus Foundation, G 1970.11. Public domain.

Selected by Dr. Walther Fuchs for the Tazzarte collection.