Claude Monet | Bridge over a Pond of Water Lilies | The Met Bridge over a Pond of Water Lilies Artist: Claude Monet (French, Paris 1840–1926 Giverny) Date: 36 1/2 x 29 in. (92.7 x 73.7 cm) Classification: H. O. Havemeyer Collection, Bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929 Accession Number: 29.100.113 On view at The Met Fifth Avenue in Gallery 819 In 1893, Monet, a passionate horticulturist, purchased land with a pond near his property in Giverny, intending to build something "for the pleasure of the eye and also for motifs to paint." The result was his water-lily garden. In 1899, he began a series of eighteen views of the wooden footbridge over the pond, completing twelve paintings, including the present one, that summer. The vertical format of the picture, unusual in this series, gives prominence to the water lilies and their reflections on the pond.

Catalogue Entry "A landscape does not get under your skin in one day. And then all of a sudden I had the revelation of how enchanting my pond was. I took up my palette. Since then I’ve hardly had any other subject," Claude Monet told Marc Elder in 1924. Thirty-one years earlier, in 1893, the painter bought a small piece of land across the railroad tracks from his property at Giverny that included a small pond formed by water from the Ru stream, a diversion of the Epte river (a tributary of the Seine). His intention was to construct something "for the pleasure of the eye and also for motifs to paint" (quoted in Tucker 1990, p. 255). He installed a Japanese-style footbridge over the pond late that year following the same axis as his main garden path and first painted the motif in three canvases of 1895 before planting water lilies (see Additional Images, figs. 1, 2).

Monet returned in a concerted way to depict the bridge over his pond in eighteen canvases of 1899–1900 and exhibited twelve of them all with similar titles at Durand-Ruel’s gallery in Paris in 1900. He had spent the warm-weather months of 1899 devoted to the series, as his letters of that summer attest. In The Met’s canvas, the bridge is front and center, much larger than the bridge of his first forays into the subject. In 1901, after this initial series, he purchased more of the marshy land adjacent to the pond and enlarged it by diverting water from the stream. He also added a framework to the bridge for wisteria and planted bamboo, Japanese apple and cherry trees as well as rhododendrons, in addition to the large willow and poplar trees that were already there. The painter returned to the motif after modifying the pond again, with a second series created between 1903 and 1908 and exhibited in 1909.

After a final enlargement of the water garden due to flooding in 1910, he undertook a third group in the years during and after the First World War, comprising the large decorations for the two oval rooms at the Musée de l’Orangerie in Paris. The Picture: The Met’s 1899 picture is similar in composition and colors to two others of that year in the National Gallery, London, and the Musée d’Orsay, Paris (see Additional Images, figs. 3, 4); other examples from his 1899 series include paintings in the Philadelphia Museum of Art; Pushkin Museum, Moscow; Musée d’Orsay, Paris; National Gallery, London; Mohammed Mahmoud Khalil Museum, Cairo; and private collections. Whereas these paintings retain an illusion of recession of the pond into depth (despite the extremely minimal remaining patch of sky), later efforts moved toward a flatter abstraction of the water surface itself that became influential decades later to the generation of Abstract Expressionist artists. In all, Monet painted at least one hundred images of his waterlily pool over a period of more than twenty years.

His first series came soon after another contemplative series, Mornings on the Seine (1897) (see, for example, The Met, 56.135.4 ), where he attended to the particular qualities of morning light reflected on the water. In the present work, the surrounding features of the landscape have been left by the wayside to focus on the bridge itself and the water lilies below. While most of the paintings in the series have a nearly square format, The Met’s picture is one of two in vertical format, which here allows for a greater relationship between the flora of the earth and water, giving slightly more prominence to the lilies. The Met’s work distinctively lacks the tuft of irises that flanks the bridge at left in all of the other examples of that year. While there were actually seven supporting bars that upheld the ramp of the bridge, only four of them are visible in The Met’s painting and either four or five in the other versions that year. The strong rhythm of the four vertical bars punctuating the bridge mid-air contrasts with the water lilies that seem to expand horizontally beyond the picture plane.

At the same time, there is a palpable tension between the illusions both of recession into depth and of the reflective, translucent quality of the water in comparison with the thick dabs of yellow, light pink, white, and green paint that make up the water lilies and seem to sit on the two-dimensional surface of the painting. The deep red curved form at the bottom of the painting representing the bridge’s shadow also figures in this two- versus three-dimensional interplay. Monet had a team of outdoor workers helping him to maintain his gardens at Giverny. Gardening was so important to him that "had he not been a painter, he probably would have been a botanist" (Tucker 1990, p. 255). He was receiving all sorts of advice from French gardening experts, subscribing to horticultural magazines, and ordering exotic plants from far-off locales. The year before undertaking The Met’s painting, the critic Guillemot (quoted in Tucker 1990, p.

255) remarked that Monet read more catalogues and horticultural price lists "than articles by aesthetes." Monet focused so intensely on the water lilies that when guests arrived in late afternoon, he would rush them over to the pond to see the lilies before they closed at five o’clock (Vauxcelles 1905). It has been noted (Wildenstein 1985) that, most likely, he painted the entire series from a makeshift studio always placed at the same vantage point at the outlet of his water basin. The art critic Arsène Alexandre (1901) noted it sat in the marsh "like a tent and an observatory" (see Additional Images, fig. 5). Monet also may have used a rowboat that visitors recalled having seen moored to the bridge to sit in and paint the bridge with a head-on view. He retouched the works as a group before exhibiting them, stressing links of color and form among them. While most of the canvases from 1899 have greenish tonalities, those from 1900 integrate warmer colors into the greens.

Japonisme: Local residents called his water garden the "Japanese garden" and Japanese visitors saw similarities to Japanese gardens, yet, according to Maurice Kahn (Kahn 1904), Monet claimed he had not had the idea of creating a Japanese garden in mind when constructing it. The Japanese gardens Monet might have seen on view at the Universal Exposition in 1889 were very different, too (see Seiberling 1976). Still, Monet certainly knew and collected Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock prints with images of bridges. He had been collecting Japanese prints since the 1860s. At the end of the nineteenth century in Paris, all things Japanese were very much in vogue, particularly among the arts, so much so that Jules Claretie coined the term "japonisme" in 1872 to describe the phenomenon. While Monet never visited Japan, he learned of its culture through its art and believed, as did many Europeans of the time, that Japanese culture was artistic and that Japanese people had refined artistic tastes (Spate and Bromfield 2001, p. 4).

The very notion of creating serial paintings, it has been suggested (Spate and Bromfield 2001, pp. 8, 36), may have come to the painter from such Japanese landscape print series as Katsushika Hokusai’s famous Thirty-six Views of Mt. Fuji; Monet owned nine prints from the series, and three volumes of Hokusai’s One Hundred Views of Mount Fuji numbered among a long list of books and articles on Japanese art and culture that filled his library (see list in Monet and Japan 2001, p. 213). A bridge depicted in Monet’s Japanese print collection, such as Utagawa Hiroshige’s Monkey Bridge, Kai Province (1853), probably inspired him to build his own (Dumas 2015, p. 215). Hiroshige created several images of Japanese bridges surrounded by nature (e.g., see Additional Images, fig. 6), even including the wisteria that Monet would add later to his bridge in abundance. The Japanese woodblock artist tended to place his bridges to one side, though, where Monet’s was placed more squarely head-on in the present and concurrent canvases.

Viewers still saw a connection, though, at the exhibition in 1900, where his work was received favorably. When talking about his bridge paintings, Monet spoke of "peaceful meditation" and the Japanese idea of evoking "the whole by means of a fragment"; he said he had "no other wish than to mingle more closely with nature" (quoted in Mühlberger 1993). His notions of inner peace reached through a study of nature melded with his japonisme; he planted flowers he saw in Japanese prints, such as Hiroshige’s wisteria, and even painted his dining room in yellows that had been used by his favorite Japanese artists Hiroshige and Hokusai and mounted his Japanese print collection against those tones (see Additional Images, fig. 7). Later, Monet commented of Japanese woodblock prints to the Duke of Treviso, "what we appreciated above all in the West was the bold fashion of designing their subjects: those people [Japanese artists] have taught us to compose differently, there is no doubt about that" (quoted in Guitton 2014).

His flattening of the picture plane with the motif of the bridge in The Met’s version and others, as well as his tightly cropped and contained view, display a compositional debt to Hiroshige and Hokusai (see, for example, Hiroshige’s Rain Shower above the Great Bridge at Atake [1857] and Inside Kameido Tenjin Shrine [1856] from his series One Hundred Famous Views of Edo as well as Hokusai’s Under Mannen Bridge at Fukagawa [1830–31, from Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji]). The design of Monet’s Eastern-inspired water garden contrasted with that of his flower garden, which was more traditionally Western in conception and evokes eighteenth-century formal country-house garden designs with strong geometric plans. The lily pond’s inclusion of the bridge, bamboo, gingko trees, and Japanese fruit trees on its banks recalls Asian precedents. Just as they commingled with Western plantings, Japanese cherry, apple, and maple trees as well as Oriental poppies and Japanese anemones took root in the flower garden (see Tucker 1990, p. 256).

Monet and the New Botany: Monet could have learned of Japanese gardens from a variety of sources: recent publications on the topic, such as Gustave Geffroy’s article on Japanese landscapists and their gardens in Siegfried Bing’s Le Japon artistique in December 1890; his friends, patron Tadamasa Hayashi and journalist, author, and art critic Théodore Duret; the horticultural exhibition at the Universal Exhibition of 1889; and a Japanese garden near Versailles built by Hugues Krafft in 1885. Hayashi was a frequent visitor to Giverny and owner of two Monet paintings for which he may have traded Japanese prints; he also may have taught Monet about the religious significance of Japanese gardens. Duret had visited the gardens of the summer palace of Hamagoten in Edo and could report back.

Monet may have seen photographs of gardens in Japan, Japanese screens with images of gardens, and a Japanese garden first-hand at the horticultural exhibition of 1889 or at Versailles, where Krafft built his 1885 Japanese garden Midori no Sato ("Hill of Verdant Greenery") with a waterlily pool and a red lacquer bridge following a trip to Japan. Finally, a letter from Monet to fellow painter Paul Helleu of June 9, 1891, makes reference to the expected visit of his Japanese gardener, so influences of Japanese-style gardening at Giverny may have been very direct (Wildenstein 1974 [1979]; for all of these possible sources, see Spate and Bromfield 2001, p. 46). Monet kept abreast of what could be called the "new botany" of the period, following the new hybrid creations of French growers Joseph Bory Latour-Marliac and Antoine Lagrange.

While scholars often have discussed Stéphane Mallarmé’s poem "Le Nénuphar blanc" (1885) as the source for Monet’s interest in water lilies, Monet’s choice of flower, nymphéas (nymphaea), was cultivated by Latour-Marliac through a hybrid of hardier American with African and other types, not Mallarmé’s common wild nénuphars (Willsdon 2004, p. 211). In fact, the reddish tones of Monet’s 1900 series relate to the red undersides of the leaves of Latour-Marliac’s new scented hybrid water lilies. On display in a stream at the 1889 Universal Exhibition as if they were growing wild, Latour-Marliac’s water lilies completely covered the surface, as they would in Monet’s pond until the painter enlarged it in 1901 (see Additional Images, fig. 8). Monet was another exhibitor at the 1889 Universal Exposition, so it is most likely that he saw the stream display there, which won first prize.

(The grower’s water lilies won a gold medal at the 1900 Universal Exposition, where Lagrange displayed his water lilies as well.) Monet ordered small amounts of these expensive varieties from Latour-Marliac in 1894 and 1904, as well as other colorful varieties from Lagrange (Bocquillon 2009 and Willsdon 2015, p. 40). He may have also seen colorplates of the yellow, pale pink, and red new varieties of water lilies that were included in horticultural magazines and books from the 1880s on (see Holmes 2012). Another source for the idea of growing his water lilies in a wild fashion, instead of the more traditional Victorian style of growing them in rows, was William Robinson’s The Wild Garden, a popular British gardening book published in 1870 Monet may have encountered on his stay in London that year during the Franco-Prussian War or later when it found a following in France (see Willsdon 2004, pp. 138, 220, 264 n.

25, 272 n. 101, who notes that Robinson had been one of the first to publicize Latour-Marliac’s new water lilies, dedicating the 1893 volume of his journal The Garden to the French grower and including in it an article on the new water lilies [see Willsdon 2015, pp. 45, 314 n. 74]). The Garden as Refuge: The critic Arsène Alexandre visited Giverny in 1901 and described Monet’s ease and good will in his newly constructed natural floral surroundings, as opposed to the artist’s city guise, which was "cold, laconic, and sarcastic" (Alexandre 1901). The psychologically transformative aspect of Monet’s water garden was one of which the artist was proud; he chose to share the experience of his garden with passersby, according to Alexandre.

Indeed, two scholars have reckoned that the artist had sought—at the time of the Dreyfus Affair—to create a Utopian "healing dream state" for France through both his water garden and his paintings of it (see Tucker 1990 and Willsdon 2004; quote from Willsdon, who notes of the scented water lilies the healing power of synaesthetic experience, pp. 220–21). That political conflict ripped at the core of the French nation from 1894, the date of Captain Alfred Dreyfus’s conviction of treason, until 1906, the year of Dreyfus’s exoneration. The split of the French people between Dreyfusards and anti-Dreyfusards was at its height in 1899, the year of Dreyfus’s return to France for a new trial, conviction, and pardon, and the year of The Met’s painting.

Alexandre’s description of Monet’s water garden revels in its beauty: "Damascened full round leaves of water lilies, encrusted with precious stones that are their flowers, this water seems, when the sun is played on its surface, the masterpiece of a goldsmith who would combine the most magical metal alloys." Such poetic portrayals of the water garden abounded at the turn of the century alongside nationalistic rhetoric about it. This conjunction may seem odd for an image of a pond and its overarching bridge, but the artist’s retreat to nature, which began in earnest once at Giverny in the nineties, has been seen by some to have resonance beyond the personal realm to the political body of France. Monet was encouraged to expand his repertoire of subjects after his critical acclaim at the exhibitions of 1898 and 1899, according to Tucker (1990, p. 260). The contemporary critic Raymond Bouyer, for example, wrote that Monet’s work "expresses France" and called him "our great national painter" and "the most significant painter of the century" (quoted in Tucker 1990, p.

260); such high praise emboldened Monet to seek beyond the Western motifs in his garden, even painting the Houses of Parliament, Charing Cross Bridge, and other monuments of London (where he spent parts of the winters of 1899–1901), as well as his Japanese-inspired footbridge. Monet was also seeking refuge at the pond from a number of irritants, from his ever-increasing age and frailty, to the bustling modern cities of Paris and London, to France’s torn state in the height of the Dreyfus Affair. It has been noted that the painter withdrew to paint his "self-styled Eden," just as he had painted the garden in Argenteuil in the seventies in reaction to the industrial and commercial developments that surrounded him in a formerly "idyllic" town. And, as in his garden pictures of Argenteuil, Monet contained the view, closing off both background and sides, so there is no choice for the viewer but to give in to nature’s jewels (see Tucker 1990, p. 261; Tucker 1998, p. 23).

Unlike this compositional containment, the return to the fundamentals of an Impressionist technique in the series of 1899 has been seen as a "clarion call for France to reexamine her building blocks, to encourage an honest accounting, and to start anew," rather than a retreat (Tucker 1998, p. 26). It has been argued that Monet used the association with the East to show France could find important guidance at that critical moment from Japan, taking from the Japanese deep engagement with nature and its aesthetically-minded people new ideas for the French nation (Tucker 1990, p. 264). The critics’ reaction to Monet’s new Eastern motif sometimes invoked patriotic sentiment. While some may have wondered with trepidation what it could mean for the artist’s reputation as a singularly French artist to resort to foreign influence, the Impressionist defender Julien Leclercq felt that Monet had surpassed the Japanese with this series.

Leclercq (1900) summarized his support of Monet’s new images of his Japanese footbridge in the face of any possible xenophobic criticism: "to discredit [the series] is to discredit France." His exhibition of the footbridge paintings in 1900 directly followed his strong representation at the Universal Exposition of that year (Tucker 1990, p. 266). The quick shift in motifs, however, between his Universal Exposition contributions and the present series on view three weeks later actually brought forth mixed reviews and some puzzlement. But select critics like Leclercq guided the public toward a broader vision of the artist as still particularly French in his exploration of nature in art. Monet would pursue his images of Giverny for another two decades, producing five hundred pictures in all of his precious gardens, whether simply as further explorations of the garden theme he had pursued for decades, as near-at-hand balms for his own aging, or as sources of strength for his troubled world from the Dreyfus Affair through the First World War. [Jane R.

Becker 2015] Water Lily Pond | The Art Institute of Chicago Exhibition History New York, Durand-Ruel Galleries, Paintings by Claude Monet, Feb. 1–16, 1915, cat. 8. Art Institute of Chicago, Exhibition of the Mrs. L. L. Coburn Collection: Modern Paintings and Watercolors, Apr. 6–Oct. 9, 1932, cat. 25. Dayton (Ohio) Art Museum, 19th Century French Paintings from the Collection of the Art Institute of Chicago (circuit exhibition organized by the American Federation of Arts), June 1–June 22, 1948, no cat.; Springfield (Mo.) Art Museum, Sept. 9–30, 1948, no cat.; Probably Poughkeepsie, N.Y., Vassar College Art Gallery, Oct. 15–Nov. 5, 1948; Probably Manchester, N.H., Currier Gallery of Art, Nov. 16–Dec. 7, 1948; Saginaw (Mich.) Museum (as Exhibition of Nineteenth Century French Painting), Dec.

19, 1948–Jan. 9, 1949, cat. 19; Probably Omaha, Neb., Joslyn Memorial Art Museum, Jan. 23–Feb. 15, 1949; Probably Memphis, Tenn., Brooks Memorial Art Gallery, Mar. 1–22, 1949, no cat.; Utica, N.Y., Munson–Williams-Proctor Institute, Apr. 3–24, 1949, no cat. Chicago, Remington Rand, window display, Apr. 14–30, 1952, no cat. Art Institute of Chicago, The Paintings of Claude Monet, Apr. 1–June 15, 1957, no cat. no. Art Institute of Chicago, Paintings by Monet, Mar. 15–May 11, 1975, cat. 101 (ill.). New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Monet’s Years at Giverny: Beyond Impressionism, Apr. 19–July 9, 1978, cat. 33 (ill.); Saint Louis Art Museum, Aug.

1–Oct. 8, 1978. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, A Day in the Country: Impressionism and the French Landscape, June 28–Sept. 16, 1984, cat. 93 (ill.); Art Institute of Chicago, Oct. 23, 1984–Jan. 6, 1985; Paris, Galeries Nationales d’Exposition du Grand Palais, as L’impressionnisme et le paysage français, Feb. 4–Apr. 22, 1985. Auckland City Art Gallery, Claude Monet: Painter of Light, Apr. 29–June 9, 1985, cat. 27 (ill.); Sydney, Art Gallery of New South Wales, June 21–Aug. 4, 1985; Melbourne, National Gallery of Victoria, Aug. 14–Sept. 29, 1985. Madrid, Museo Español de Arte Contemporáneo, Claude Monet, 1840–1926, Apr. 29–June 30, 1986, cat.

94 (ill.). Basel, Kunstmuseum Basel, Claude Monet: Nymphéas, July 20–Oct. 19, 1986, cat. 10 (ill.). Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, Monet in the ’90s: The Series Paintings, Feb. 7–Apr. 29, 1990, cat. 91 (ill.); Art Institute of Chicago, May 19–Aug. 12, 1990; London, Royal Academy of Arts, Sept. 7–Dec. 9, 1990. Art Institute of Chicago, Claude Monet, 1840–1926, July 22–Nov. 26, 1995, cat. 114 (ill.). Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, Monet in the 20th Century, Sept. 20–Dec. 27, 1998, cat. 1 (ill.); London, Royal Academy of Arts, Jan. 23–Apr. 18, 1999.

Paris, Musée National de l’Orangerie, Monet: Le cycle des “Nymphéas,” May 6–Aug. 2, 1999, cat. 6 (ill.). Fort Worth, Tex., Kimbell Art Museum, The Impressionists: Master Paintings from the Art Institute of Chicago, June 29–Nov. 2, 2008, cat. 90 (ill.). Melbourne, National Gallery of Victoria, Monet’s Garden: The Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris, May 10–Sept. 8, 2013, no cat. no. (ill.). Publication History Lucien Descaves, “Chez Claude Monet,” Paris-Magazine, Aug. 25, 1920, p. 354 (ill.). Gustave Geffroy, “Claude Monet,” L’art et les artistes 2, 11 (Nov. 1920), p. 73 (ill.). Camille Mauclair, Claude Monet (Rieder, 1924), pp. 63; pl. 39.

Republished in Camille Mauclair, Claude Monet, 2nd ed. (Rieder, 1927), p. 63; pl. 39. Translated by J. Lewis May as Claude Monet (Dodd, Mead, 1924), pp. 6; pl. 39. Florent Fels, Claude Monet: Trente reproductions de peintures et dessins précédées d’une étude critique, Les peintres français nouveaux 22 (Gallimard, 1925), p. 63 (ill.). “Les toiles de jeunesse de Claude Monet,” L’art vivant, Jan. 1, 1927, p. 22 (ill.) Léon Werth, Claude Monet (G. Crès, 1928), pl. 50. Art Institute of Chicago, Exhibition of the Mrs. L. L. Coburn Collection: Modern Paintings and Watercolors, exh. cat. (Art Institute of Chicago, 1932), p. 20, cat. 25. Daniel Catton Rich, “The Mrs. L. L.

Coburn Collection,” in Art Institute of Chicago, Exhibition of the Mrs. L. L. Coburn Collection: Modern Paintings and Watercolors, exh. cat. (Art Institute of Chicago, 1932), p. 7. John Rewald, “Monet, Solid Builder of Impressions,” Art News 42, 10 (Oct. 1–14, 1943), p. 25 (ill.). Saginaw Museum, Exhibition of Nineteenth Century French Painting, exh. cat. (Saginaw Museum, 1949), p. 9, cat. 19. Art Institute of Chicago, “Catalogue,” Art Institute of Chicago Quarterly 51, 2 (Apr. 1, 1957), p. 33. Art Institute of Chicago, Paintings in the Art Institute of Chicago: A Catalogue of the Picture Collection (Art Institute of Chicago, 1961), p. 320. A. James Speyer, “Twentieth-Century European Paintings and Sculpture,” Apollo 84, 55 (Sept. 1966), p. 222. Frederick A.

Sweet, “Great Chicago Collectors,” Apollo 84 (Sept. 1966), pp. 201, fig. 29; 203. Denis Rouart and Jean-Dominique Rey, Monet, nymphéas, ou Les miroirs du temps, with a cat. rais. by Robert Maillard (Hazan, 1972), p. 155 (ill.). Translated by David Radzinowicz as Monet, Water Lilies: The Complete Series, rev. ed., with a cat. rais. by Julie Rouart with Camille Sourisse (Flammarion/Rizzoli, 2008), p. 121 (ill.). John Maxon, “Monet Exhibition,” Bulletin of the Art Institute of Chicago 69, 2 (Mar.–Apr. 1975), p. 2 (ill.). Grace Seiberling, “The Evolution of an Impressionist,” in Paintings by Monet, ed. Susan Wise, exh. cat. (Art Institute of Chicago, 1975), p. 37. Susan Wise, ed., Paintings by Monet, exh. cat.

(Art Institute of Chicago, 1975), p. 158, cat. 101 (ill.). Metropolitan Museum of Art, Monet’s Years at Giverny: Beyond Impressionism, exh. cat. (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1978), pp. 84, cat. 33 (ill.); 161. Kirk Varnedoe, “In Monet’s Gardens,” New York Times Magazine, Apr. 2, 1978, p. 32 (ill.). A. James Speyer and Courtney Graham Donnell, Twentieth-Century European Paintings (University of Chicago Press, 1980), p. 58, cat. 3A8; microfiche 3, no. A8 (ill.). Grace Seiberling, Monet’s Series (Garland, 1981), pp. 219; 230; 276; 438, fig. 30. Robert Gordon and Andrew Forge, Monet (Abrams, 1983), pp.

262, 268–69 (ill.), 294. Andrea P. A. Belloli, ed., A Day in the Country: Impressionism and the French Landscape, exh. cat. (Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1984), p. 365. Richard R. Brettell, “The Fields of France,” in A Day in the Country: Impressionism and the French Landscape, ed. Andrea P. A. Belloli, exh. cat. (Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1984), p. 246. Sylvie Gache-Patin, “Private and Public Gardens,” in A Day in the Country: Impressionism and the French Landscape, ed. Andrea P. A. Belloli, exh. cat. (Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1984), pp. 211; 215; 224; 230; 236; 239, no. 93 (ill.).

Scott Schaefer, “Rivers, Roads, and Trains,” in A Day in the Country: Impressionism and the French Landscape, ed. Andrea P. A. Belloli, exh. cat. (Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1984), p. 154. Scott Schaefer, “The Retreat from Paris,” in A Day in the Country: Impressionism and the French Landscape, ed. Andrea P. A. Belloli, exh. cat. (Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1984), p. 304. Richard R. Brettell, “La campagne française,” in Réunion des Musées Nationaux, L’impressionnisme et le paysage français, exh. cat. (Réunion des Musées Nationaux, 1985), p. 261. Andrew Forge, Monet, Artists in Focus (Art Institute of Chicago, 1995), pp. 61; 64; 95, pl. 24; 109.

Sylvie Gache-Patin, “Jardins privés et jardins publics,” in Réunion des Musées Nationaux, L’impressionnisme et le paysage français, exh. cat. (Réunion des Musées Nationaux, 1985), pp. 217; 220; 252–253, no. 93 (ill.). John House, “Catalogue of the Exhibition,” in Auckland City Art Gallery, Claude Monet: Painter of Light, exh. cat. (Auckland City Art Gallery/NZI, 1985), pp. 94–95, cat. 27 (ill.); 106. John House, “Monet and the Genesis of His Series,” in Auckland City Art Gallery, Claude Monet: Painter of Light, exh. cat. (Auckland City Art Gallery/NZI, 1985), p. 25. Scott Schaefer, “L’évasion loin de Paris,” in Réunion des Musées Nationaux, L’impressionnisme et le paysage français, exh. cat.

(Réunion des Musées Nationaux, 1985), p. 327. Scott Schaefer, “Rivières, routes et chemins de fer,” in Réunion des Musées Nationaux, L’impressionnisme et le paysage français, exh. cat. (Réunion des Musées Nationaux, 1985), p. 156. Virginia Spate, “Transcending the Moment—Monet’s Water Lilies, 1899–1926,” in Auckland City Art Gallery, Claude Monet: Painter of Light, exh. cat. (Auckland City Art Gallery/NZI, 1985), pp. 30, 31. Charles F. Stuckey, ed., Monet: A Retrospective (Hugh Lauter Levin, 1985), p. 237, pl. 93. Daniel Wildenstein, Claude Monet: Biographie et catalogue raisonné, vol. 4, Peintures, 1899–1926 (Bibliothèque des Arts, 1985), pp.

21; 194; 195, cat. 1628 (ill.); 349, letters 1580, 1581; 427, pièces justificatives151, 152; 431, pièces justificatives 271, 273; 432, pièce justificative 316. James G. Ravin, “Monet’s Cataracts,” JAMA: Journal of American Medical Association 254, 3 (July 19, 1985), pp. 394; 395, fig. 2. Kunstmuseum Basel, Claude Monet, Nymphéas: Impression, Vision, exh. cat. (SV International, 1986), pp. 29; 33, cat. 10 (ill.); 172. Museo Español de Arte Contemporáneo, Claude Monet, 1840–1926, exh. cat.

(Ministerio de Cultura, in collaboration with Fundación para el Apoyo de la Cultura, 1986), pp. 380–81, cat. 94 (ill.); 499. Daniel Wildenstein, “Giverny, o La conquista de lo absolute,” in Museo Español de Arte Contemporáneo, Claude Monet, 1840–1926, exh. cat. (Ministerio de Cultura, in collaboration with Fundación para el Apoyo de la Cultura, 1986), p. 68, cat. 94 (ill.). Richard R. Brettell, Post-Impressionists (Art Institute of Chicago/Abrams, 1987), pp. 111, 114 (ill.), 118. Art Institute of Chicago, Master Paintings in the Art Institute of Chicago, selected by James N. Wood and Katharine C. Lee (Art Institute of Chicago/New York Graphic Society Books/Little, Brown, 1988), p. 72 (ill.). Charles F.

Stuckey, Monet: Water Lilies (Hugh Lauter Levin/Macmillan, 1988), p. 33, pl. 6. Art Institute of Chicago, Master Paintings in the Art Institute of Chicago, selected by James N. Wood and Katharine C. Lee (Art Institute of Chicago/New York Graphic Society Books/Little, Brown, 1988), p. 72 (ill.). Paul Hayes Tucker, Monet in the ‘90s: The Series Paintings, exh. cat. (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston/Yale University Press, 1989), pp. 260; 263, pl. 98; 265; 300, cat. 91. Philip Sandblom, Creativity and Disease: How Illness Affects Literature, Art and Music, rev. ed. (Marion Boyars, 1995), pp. 131, pl. 52; 203. Charles F. Stuckey, with the assistance of Sophia Shaw, Claude Monet, 1840–1926, exh. cat.

(Art Institute of Chicago/Thames & Hudson, 1995), pp. 135, cat. 114 (ill.); 234; 246. Paul Hayes Tucker, Claude Monet: Life and Art (Yale University Press, 1995), pp. 184; 186, pl. 212. Genevieve Morgan, ed., Monet: The Artist Speaks (Collins, 1996), pp. 85 (ill.), 95. Daniel Wildenstein, Monet, or The Triumph of Impressionism, cat. rais., vol. 1 (Taschen/Wildenstein Institute, 1996), p. 353. Daniel Wildenstein, Monet: Catalogue raisonné/Werkverzeichnis, vol. 4, Nos. 1596–1983 et les grandes décorations (Taschen/Wildenstein Institute, 1996), pp. 728–29, cat. 1628 (ill.). James G. Ravin, “Artistic Vision in Old Age: Claude Monet,” in Michael F.

Marmor and James G. Ravin, The Eye of an Artist (Mosby, 1997), p. 169, fig. 14.1. George T. M. Shackelford and MaryAnne Stevens, “The Garden at Giverny, 1900–1902,” in Paul Hayes Tucker with George T. M. Shackelford and MaryAnne Stevens, Monet in the 20th Century, exh. cat. (Royal Academy of Arts, London/Museum of Fine Arts, Boston/Yale University Press, 1998), pp. 118; 120, cat. 1 (ill.). Paul Hayes Tucker, “The Revolution in the Garden: Monet in the Twentieth Century,” in Paul Hayes Tucker, with George T. M. Shackelford and MaryAnne Stevens, Monet in the 20th Century, exh. cat. (Royal Academy of Arts, London; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston/Yale University Press, 1998), p. 32. Christopher Yetton, Monet in the 20th Century: An Introduction, exh. cat.

(Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1999), pp. 30, cat. 1 (ill.); 31 (detail). “Monet, les nymphéas: L’exposition,” special issue, Connaissance des arts 137 (1999), pp. 62–63, ill. 59. Pierre Georgel, Claude Monet: Nymphéas (Hazan, 1999), pp. 8, 32 (ill.). Pierre Georgel with Chantal Georgel and Jacqueline Séjourné, Monet: Le cycle des “Nymphéas,” exh. cat. (Réunion des Musées Nationaux, 1999), pp. 31; 81, cat. 6 (ill.). Art Institute of Chicago, Impressionism and Post-Impressionism in the Art Institute of Chicago, selected by James N. Wood (Art Institute of Chicago/Hudson Hills, 2000), p. 159 (ill.). Christie’s, London, Impressionist and Post-Impressionist Art, sale cat.

(Christie’s, June 18, 2000), p. 48, fig. 2. Karin Sagner-Düchting, “Monet’s Late Work from the Vantage Point of Modernism,” in Monet and Modernism, ed. Karin Sagner-Düchting, exh. cat. (Prestel, 2001), p. 25. Karin Sagner-Düchting, “The Waterlilies in Giverny and the Grande Décoration,” in Monet and Modernism, ed. Karin Sagner-Düchting, exh. cat. (Prestel, 2001), pp. 66, 73 (ill.). Norio Shimada and Keiko Sakagami, Kurōdo Mone meigashū: Hikari to kaze no kiseki [Claude Monet: 1881–1926], vol. 2 (Nihon Bijutsu Kyōiku Sentā, 2001), p. 106, no. 234 (ill.); 190. Debra N.

Mancoff, Monet: Nature into Art (Publications International, 2003), pp. 96–97 (ill.), 128. Françoise Cachin, “Claude Monet, Le pont japonais, sur le basin des nymphéas,” in L’impressionnisme, de France et d’Amérique: Monet, Renoir, Sisley, Degas . . . , ed. Françoise Cachin and Richard R. Brettell, exh. cat. (Artlys/Musée Fabre/Musée de Grenoble, 2007), p. 140. Eric M. Zafran, “Monet in America,” in Wildenstein and Co., Claude Monet (1840–1926): A Tribute to Daniel Wildenstein and Katia Granoff, exh. cat. (Wildenstein, 2007), p. 127. Gloria Groom and Douglas Druick, with the assistance of Dorota Chudzicka and Jill Shaw, The Impressionists: Master Paintings from the Art Institute of Chicago, exh. cat.

(Art Institute of Chicago/Kimbell Art Museum, 2008), pp. 15 (ill.); 19 (ill.); 20 (ill.); 22; 161; 163; 167; 172 (detail); 173, cat. 90 (ill.). Simultaneously published as Gloria Groom and Douglas Druick, with the assistance of Dorota Chudzicka and Jill Shaw, The Age of Impressionism at the Art Institute of Chicago (Art Institute of Chicago/Yale University Press, 2008), pp. 15 (ill.); 19 (ill.); 20 (ill.); 22; 161; 163; 167; 172 (detail); 173, cat. 90 (ill.). Jon Kear, The Treasures of the Impressionists (Andre Deutsch, 2008), pp. 66 (ill.), 72. Alec Mishory, Still Life: From Represented Objects to Real Objects, vol.

1 (Open University of Israel, 2008), pp. 241, fig. 208; 292. Michael Sciarrillo and Scott Aker, “Drawing as Insight into Wholeness,” Journal for Geometry and Graphics 12, 1 (2008), pp. 87; 89; 91, fig. 1. Michel Draguet, Les Nymphéas: Monet; Grandeur; Nature (Hazan, 2010), p. 4, fig. 10. Mary Mathews Gedo, Monet and His Muse: Camille Monet in the Artist’s Life (University of Chicago Press, 2010), p. 221, fig. 15.1. Marianne Mathieu and Sophie Matthiesson, Monet’s Garden, Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris, exh. cat. (National Gallery of Victoria, 2013), pp. 126 (ill.), 173. “Cat. 37: Water Lily Pond, 1900,” in Monet Paintings and Drawings at the Art Institute of Chicago, ed.

Gloria Groom and Jill Shaw (Art Institute of Chicago, 2014). Ownership History Sold by the artist to Léonce Rosenberg, Paris, Dec. 1900. [1] Acquired by the Prince de Wagram, 1904. [2] Acquired by Léonce Rosenberg, Paris, by July 22, 1914. [3] Sold by Léonce Rosenberg, Paris, to Durand-Ruel, Paris, July 22, 1914, for 21,000 francs. [4] Sold by Durand-Ruel, Paris, to Durand-Ruel, New York, Dec. 3 or 30, 1914. [5] Sold by Durand-Ruel, New York, to Arthur Meeker, Chicago, Apr. 8, 1915, for $7,400. [6] Acquired by Mrs. Lewis Larned (Annie Swan) Coburn, Chicago, by 1933. Bequeathed by Mrs.

Lewis Larned (Annie Swan) Coburn (died 1932), Chicago, to the Art Institute of Chicago, 1933. NOTES [1] According to Daniel Wildenstein, Monet: Catalogue raisonné, vol. 4, Nos. 1596–1983 et les grandes décorations (Taschen/Wildenstein Institute, 1996), pp. 728–29, cat. 1628 (ill.). [2] According to Daniel Wildenstein, Monet: Catalogue raisonné/Werkverzeichnis, vol. 4, Nos. 1596–1983 et les grandes décorations (Taschen/Wildenstein Institute, 1996), pp. 728–29, cat. 1628 (ill.). [3] According to Durand-Ruel, Paris, stock book for 1913–21 (no.

10710, as Le bassin aux nymphéas, 1900): “Purchased from Léonce Rosenberg by DR Paris on 22 July 1914 for 21 000 F; Stock DR Paris no. 10710; photo no. 7970,” as confirmed by Paul-Louis Durand-Ruel and Flavie Durand-Ruel, Durand-Ruel Archives, to the Art Institute of Chicago, Feb. 21, 2013, curatorial object file, Art Institute of Chicago. [4] The transaction is documented in the Durand-Ruel, Paris, stock book for 1913–21 (no. 10710, as Le bassin aux nymphéas,1900): “Purchased from Léonce Rosenberg by DR Paris on 22 July 1914 for 21 000 F / Stock DR Paris no. 10710; photo no.

7970,” as confirmed by Paul-Louis Durand-Ruel and Flavie Durand-Ruel, Durand-Ruel Archives, to the Art Institute of Chicago, Feb. 21, 2013, curatorial object file, Art Institute of Chicago. [5] The Paris and New York Durand-Ruel stock books give different dates for the sale. The Paris stock book for 1913–21 (no. 10710 as Le bassin aux nymphéas, 1900) states: “Sold to DR New York on 3 December 1914.” The New York stock book for 1904–24 (no. 3807, as Le bassin aux nymphéas, 1900) states: “Purchased by DR New York on 30 December 1914.” See Paul-Louis Durand-Ruel and Flavie Durand-Ruel, Durand-Ruel Archives, to the Art Institute of Chicago, Feb. 21, 2013, curatorial object file, Art Institute of Chicago.

[6] The transaction is documented in the Durand-Ruel, New York, stock book for 1904–24 (no. 3807, as Le bassin aux nymphéas, 1900): “sold to Arthur Meeker on 8 Apr. 1915 for $7 400.” See Paul-Louis Durand-Ruel and Flavie Durand-Ruel, Durand-Ruel Archives, to the Art Institute of Chicago, Feb. 21, 2013, curatorial object file, Art Institute of Chicago. According to Daniel Wildenstein, Monet: Catalogue raisonné/Werkverzeichnis, vol. 4, Nos. 1596–1983 et les grandes décorations (Taschen/Wildenstein Institute, 1996), pp. 728–29, cat. 1628 (ill.), the painting was acquired again by Durand-Ruel around 1923. Wildenstein cites a letter from Durand-Ruel to A. Meeker, dated Nov.

24, 1923, in which Durand-Ruel writes that they are happy to hold the Monet Bassin aux nymphéas on deposit and that they will do their best to sell it on Mr. Meeker’s behalf. See Daniel Wildenstein, Claude Monet: Biographie et catalogue raisonné, vol. 4, Peintures, 1899–1926 (Bibliothèque des Arts, 1985), p. 432, pièce justificative 316. According to the Durand-Ruel Archives, “Wildenstein catalogue mentions a purchase from Meeker by Durand-Ruel in 1923; we have not found such information in our archives,” see Paul-Louis Durand-Ruel and Flavie Durand-Ruel, Durand-Ruel Archives, to the Art Institute of Chicago, Feb. 21, 2013, curatorial object file, Art Institute of Chicago.

Add this item to: Water Lily Pool by Claude Monet - Claude Monet Giverny Paintings | HowStuffWorks Water Lily Pool by Claude Monet Prev Next Claude Monet's Water Lily Pool is an oil on canvas (35-3/8x39-3/8 inches) in the Mr. and Mrs. Lewis Larned Coburn Memorial Collection at The Art Institute of Chicago. Water Lily Pool was painted by Claude Monet in 1900. At the end of the summer, he added six more paintings to his series. They were exhibited at Durand-Ruel's gallery in Paris that November. Some critics gave these Monet works lukewarm reviews, comparing the images to Japanese prints that featured the characteristic arched footbridge. Others questioned why Monet had chosen such a narrow subject. But art critic Julien Leclerq possessed the foresight to suggest that the paintings represented an unfolding idea that people would understand more over time. Up Next Explore This Work Explore This Work Bibliography Explore This Work "It took me a long time to understand my water lilies…. I grew them without thinking of painting them…. And then, all of a sudden, I had the revelation of the enchantment of my pond.

I took up my palette." —Claude Monet, 1924 Ten years after moving to Giverny in 1883, Claude Monet envisioned turning a small pond on an adjacent parcel of land into an Asian-influenced water garden. Overcoming the resistance of locals wary of introducing foreign plants into the region, Monet won approval to expand the pond by diverting water from the Epte River. He encircled the basin with a vivacious arrangement of flowers, trees, and bushes, and the next year filled it with water lilies. He added a Japanese-style wooden bridge in 1895, then a few years later started to paint the pond and its water lilies—and never stopped, making them the obsessive focus of his intensely searching work for the next quarter century. Lush and luminous, The Japanese Bridge immerses us in the physical experience of being in the garden. With the bands of the blue bridge suspended like a canopy near the top of the canvas and no sky to be seen, the water and billowing foliage fill the visual field, immersing the viewer in the verdant, brightly colored waterscape.

Cool blue and green tones predominate, but are balanced by the pink, white, and yellow lilies floating in complex pattern across the surface of the water from near to far. Controlled, vertical dabs of paint define the sparkling greenery and its fleeting reflection in the water, while the more fluid lilies are rendered with broad, textured, horizontal strokes that emphasize the shared physicality of the paint and the landscape. Deeply admiring nature’s central role in Japanese culture, Monet here fuses Japanese motifs with his impressionist palette and brushstrokes to posit a hybrid, transcendent understanding of nature’s primacy. He first seriously explored translating the garden into paint in the summer of 1899, producing a series of 12 views of its light-dappled surface, arching footbridge, and surrounding flora. He exhibited the paintings, including this one, at the Durand-Ruel Gallery in Paris the following year. Auguste Renoir, Claude Monet, 1872 About the Artist Claude Monet was raised on the Normandy coast in Le Havre, where his father sold ships’ provisions.

He gained a local reputation as a caricaturist while still a teenager, and landscape painter Eugène Boudin invited the budding artist to accompany him as he painted scenes at the local beaches. Boudin introduced Monet to plein-air (outdoor) painting, which would prove a decisive influence in his career. Monet went to Paris in 1862 to study painting and there befriended fellow students Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley, and Frédéric Bazille, who would later form the core group of the original impressionists. By the end of the 1860s, Monet had largely abandoned ambitious, large-scale figurative painting in favor of smaller, spontaneous landscape works executed en plein air. During the Franco-Prussian War, Monet fled to London, and in late 1871 he settled at Argenteuil , a suburb just west of Paris that maintained its rustic charm even as it underwent rapid modernization. From 1872 to 1876 Argenteuil became the hub of what would soon be known as impressionist painting.

Monet and his colleagues organized an exhibition of their work in Paris in 1874; one of Monet’s exhibited works, Impression, Sunrise (1873), a loosely painted sketch of an industrial seascape, led critics to derisively dub the group “the impressionists.” Financial difficulties forced Monet to relocate to Vétheuil in 1878, and in 1883, he settled in Giverny, where he would live for the rest of his life. Most of Monet’s paintings from the 1870s depict the landscape in and around the small towns along the Seine. Working outdoors, he employed seemingly spontaneous brushstrokes to capture the ever-changing effects of light and atmosphere. In the 1880s Monet expanded his motifs, turning his attention both to the Mediterranean and to the rugged vistas along the Normandy coast. In the 1890s he undertook a number of paintings produced in series, including pictures of poplars, grainstacks, and Rouen Cathedral; each work captured a specific atmospheric effect and time of day.

With his reputation as France’s leading landscape painter established and his financial situation secure, the artist turned his attention to the lavish gardens he had constructed at Giverny, eventually creating more than 250 works focused on water lilies. Resources Japanese Footbridge Paintings by Claude Monet | Monet Gallery Monet • Paintings • Japanese Footbridge Japanese Footbridge Monet and his family moved outside of Paris, to Giverny, in 1883. Here he would paint many of the works that would define him as a pioneer of art, and one of the most influential artists of all time. The Paintings In 1889 Monet painted a bridge that went over the pond in his garden. Like other series of paintings, such as Haystacks and Parliament, done by Monet, he revisited the subject many times. Throughout 1889 and 1890, Monet painted several canvases depicting the bridge and its surroundings. In each painting in the Japanese Footbridge series, a bridge is the focus of the composition. In most of these paintings, the bridge spans the entire width of the picture dividing the canvas in half.

The color of the bridge varies in each depiction depending on the light in which it was painted. It is always an arched wooden bridge with a handrail mirroring the arched horizontal of the walking planks held up by a few vertical supports. In some, the bridge appears dark showing the color of the dark wood in the shadows of the surrounding willow trees or under the shade of a passing cloud. In others, it is a vivid blue, purple, or pink reflecting the light in the atmosphere bouncing off the flowers along the banks of the pond. The top half of the painting shows what is behind the bridge, away from the viewer. The top is dominated by the leaning branches and leaves of the willow trees. It is almost entirely made up of shades of green occasionally with some blue or yellow. On the bottom of the paintings Monet shows his pond. Later in his life the Water Lilies would become among his most well-known paintings. Like the bridge, the color of the water, lilies, and other flowers change. In some they are a deep red or orange. In others they are a vibrant green, soft blue, or highlighted with pinks.

The Garden Like Monet’s other series of paintings, the subject matter, in this case the actual bridge, is not what makes these the important works that they are. Monet did something very new at Giverny. Instead of painting the beauty of nature as it is, he made nature into what he wanted and then painted it. His paintings of his gardens, including the Japanese Footbridge, are paintings showing how he sculpted nature. Monet meticulously cultivated the garden to his specifications. He brought in a craftsman to construct the bridge, traded plants to get the best rare varieties he could find, and diverted a stream to supply his pond with water. His garden at Giverny would provide the inspiration for what would become his biggest influence on the art world. Interpretive Resource | The Art Institute of Chicago An exploration of Monet's water landscapes, painted between 1899 and the painter's death in 1926. Book: Post-Impressionism Brettell, Richard. Post-Impressionists. Chicago: The Art Institute of Chicago and New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1987, p. 111-12.

MONET’S WATER LANDSCAPES Twentieth-century art is inconceivable without Claude Monet’s paintings of water lilies. They are, in many ways, as important in the history of artistic invention as the Analytic Cubism of Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque or the decorative abstraction of Henri Matisse. Painted between 1899 and the painter’s death in 1926, they are among the greatest "late" works in the history of art, rivaling those of Titian, Rembrandt, Chardin, and Cezanne as landmarks in the history of easel painting. Monet himself was aware of the importance of his paintings of water lilies and contributed a good deal to our understanding of them. Indeed, he was obsessed by these paintings, which he called "water landscapes" and he painted little else during the last twenty-five years of his life. Monet moved to his long, rustic farmhouse in Giverny in 1883. In 1890, he acquired more property and devoted himself to creating out of it an ideal garden, as distinct from the real, rural subjects he had painted and continued to paint until 1900.

The garden was divided into two major parts: the flower garden near the house, and, in a swampy field, the water garden created by diverting a tributary of the Epte River. The flower garden was arranged in a rectilinear pattern of paths, while the water garden was completely curvilinear, encircling a peanut-shaped pond with a Japanese footbridge at the narrow focal point. The flower garden was useful as well as beautiful, providing flowers for the house and studio. The water garden’s only purpose was to be beautiful. The earliest series of water landscapes was painted in 1899 and 1900 and represents the Japanese footbridge from the larger end of the pond. In these paintings, including the Art Institute’s Pool of Water Lilies, water lilies cover most of the surface of the pond and leave only small areas for actual reflections. The pictorial space of these early paintings is conventional — the horizon line is clearly fixed so that the water takes up the lower half of the pictorial field, while the bridge and trees that dominate the upper half act as a point of reference that makes the remainder of the space in the sunlit pool legible.

These early water landscapes are bounded by trees at the end of the pool, keeping the viewer within the confines of Monet’s ideal world. Monet became less and less concerned with conventional pictorial space in his transcription of the water garden. By 1904, the horizon line of the water landscapes had crept to the very top of the canvas, and, by 1906, when Water Lilies was painted, there was no horizon line at all. For Monet, the subject of the paintings increasingly became the surface of the water. At once a mirror of the world above and a window into the world within the pool, Monet’s illusionistic surface was in every sense the ultimate pictorial surface. Monet’s paintings of his water garden did not follow a clear progression from conventional landscapes to radical treatments of the surface of both pond and canvas. Monet worked in fits and starts. Sometimes, his eyes troubled him, and he was unable to see correctly. At other times, he was overcome by bouts of depression, boredom, or self-doubt. These had a dramatic effect on his work.

We know, for example, that he started a good many more paintings than he finished in his latter years and that he also destroyed works of art because of what he perceived to be their failures. In fact, the painter destroyed at least fifteen major paintings of the water garden just before they were to be exhibited at the Durand-Ruel gallery in Paris in 1908. Few painters of his generation demanded as much of their paintings as did Monet. Monet’s aim was not solely to create a viable pictorial surface. By 1910, he had transcended the conventional boundaries of easel painting and had begun to create immense decorations that culminated in the series of water lilies commissioned by the French government for two oval galleries in the Orangerie. Monet began the series in 1916 and worked on it until his death, creating a number of huge triptychs and other groups of canvases designed to be seen together. No longer was the painter interested in decorative series. Rather, he created immense, unified decorations. The importance of these paintings cannot be overestimated.

They were created at a time in the history of western painting when the conventions of representation, either of solid bodies in space or of illusionistic landscape space, were under scrutiny. It is amazing to be reminded that these canvases were painted nearly four years before Analytical Cubism changed forever concepts of the solidity of the figure in pictorial space, proving that the elderly Monet was as much a radical as the young Picasso or Braque. The remarkable aspect of Monet’s late decorative painting is its facture — the rugged, almost pock-marked surface that Monet had developed by 1916. The hearty spring flowers in Iris by the Pond emanate from a surface so complex and dense that it resembles a roughened plaster wall. Gone is the subtle interplay between the canvas and the painter’s marks that was such an important part of Impressionist painting. Never completed, Iris by the Pond was in Monet’s studio at the time of his death in 1926. Unlike many of his late canvases, it was not finished by another hand to make it saleable.

Hence, when we stand before it, we can experience with remarkable authenticity the inner workings of the artist’s mind as he struggled to push painting to a new, transcendent realm. Tags:

Question: Who painted The Water Lily Pool?
Answer: Claude Monet