Inspiration and Insecticide from the Flower Garden.

—In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower by Marcel Proust P because chrysanthemums bloom well into the autumn and come in an array of colors and varieties, these hardy flowers have inspired poets, writers, and artists for millennia. French Impressionist artist Claude Monet celebrated this flower in a series of four still-life paintings in 1897, including Chrysanthemum, 1897, selected for this month’s cover art. These works marked the start of a fresh approach that foreshadowed Monet’s renowned water-lily paintings, breaking from conventional arrangements of foods and flowers characteristic of his still-life paintings from the previous two decades. Art scholar John House wrote that the Chrysanthemum canvases are “unconstrained by still-life conventions, covered entirely by a vibrant, virtuoso display of blossoms and foliage.” In discussing the Chrysanthemum series, House noted that “The flowers fill the canvas, with no explicit spatial context. The blooms are arranged in clusters of varied color