The locales of Caillebotte’s painting were Paris, various rivers, and the countryside. In 1886, he began to produce less and almost stopped exhibiting. He spent his time on the banks of the Seine at Argenteuil and lived mainly in Le Petit Gennevilliers in a property he had acquired with his brother Martial a few years earlier, a place where he could devote himself to his twin passions of boating and gardening. Horticulture is the main subject in his letters to Monet and the writer Octave Mirbeau, and his paintings were now almost all of his garden and the flowers he grew there, laid out in geometrical beds. Caillebotte’s passionate pictures of these blooms recall the composition of Japanese prints, as in the case with this decorative panel in which chrysanthemums freely overgrow the space with their bright colors. In 1894, the artist’s brother, Martial, gave this canvas to Monet in memory of the recently deceased painter. In 1896, Monet executed several panels with chrysanthemums, which were seen by critics as a tribute to Caillebotte.