Water Lilies – Claude Monet

Water Lilies – Claude Monet – 1906

“A moment, an aspect of nature contains everything,” mused Claude Monet, in reference to his final masterpieces, the water paintings he crafted close to his residence in Giverny from 1897 until his passing in 1926. These creations replaced the diverse modern subjects he had depicted from the 1870s to the 1890s with a single timeless subject: pond lilies. The centerpiece of these canvases was the artist’s blossoming garden, which housed a water garden and a modest pond spanned by a Japanese bridge. In his first series of water lilies (1897-1899), Monet captured the mood of the pond, with its flora, Japanese dock, and trees meticulously separated by a fixed horizon line. Over time, Claude Monet became less concerned with the traditional pictorial field. By the time he painted “Water Lilies – Claude Monet”, he had completely removed the horizon line. In this spatially ambiguous painting, the artist looks downward, focusing solely on the pond surface, with its cluster of shifting vegetation amidst the glimmer of the sky and trees. Thus, Monet constructed the depiction of a flat surface on a vertical one.

Category: Monet Paintings

Original format 89.9 x 94.1 cm
© The Art Institute of Chicago