No sky, no shore, only water, floating leaves, flowers and reflections. In his later years Monet created a water-lily pond at Giverny and painted it over and over for nearly thirty years, producing some 250 Water Lilies. This is one of them.
Key facts
- Artist
- Claude Monet1840–1926 · French
- Date
- 1906
- Period
- Impressionism1860–1890
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- 89.9 × 94.1 cm
- Location
- Art Institute of Chicago Chicago, United States
Actual size
Compared with an adult 170 cm tall
Palette
#5C7981#5888A7#3E636F#7E9DA9Background
In 1883 Monet moved to Giverny, northwest of Paris. In 1893 he bought a plot of land across the road, diverted a stream to create a pond, planted water lilies and built a Japanese-style arched bridge over it.
He employed several gardeners, one of whom was devoted entirely to cleaning the pond and tending the lilies each day. “My garden is my most beautiful masterpiece,” Monet said.
Around 1905 Monet began to focus on the water's surface alone, abandoning banks and sky. This work, painted in 1906, is in the Art Institute of Chicago.
Technique & composition
There is no horizon; we seem to look down at the water. The sky appears only as : blue, white clouds and overlap in the water with floating on its surface, creating two superimposed spaces in which up and down, real and reflected, blur.
Monet painted the lily pads in short, loose strokes and the reflections in long, soft ones. Blues, violets and greens dominate, dotted with pink and white blossoms, creating a calm, dreamlike mood.
Details
Symbolism
An infinite surface
The borderless composition makes the water seem to extend beyond the frame. Monet wanted viewers to be immersed in the peace of “an endless whole, water without horizon or shore”.
The passing of time
Monet painted the same pond again and again at different seasons and times of day, recording changes of light and colour. Each Water Lilies is a slice of time.
Stories
- Did you know?
In old age Monet developed cataracts, and the colours he saw grew yellower and redder; after surgery in 1923 he even repainted some works.
- Did you know?
After the First World War Monet gave a series of monumental Water Lilies to France as a memorial to peace. They were installed after his death in two oval rooms at the Musée de l'Orangerie in Paris.
- Did you know?
The garden and water-lily pond at Giverny are open to the public and attract hundreds of thousands of visitors every year.
Legacy
Monet's late Water Lilies grew ever closer to abstraction and were neglected for a time after his death. Only in the 1950s, with the rise of American Abstract Expressionists such as Pollock and Rothko, did critics rediscover them as forerunners of abstract art.
