Water Lilies
by Claude Monet
A near-square canvas from the middle of Monet's water-lily years, in which the bridge, the bank and the sky have all gone and only the surface of the pond is left — the step that leads directly to the [Orangerie murals](work:water-lilies-orangerie).
- 1906
- Oil on canvas
About Claude Monet
Only the water
Clusters of lilies sit at the lower left and the upper right, and between them the water opens into a pale channel running diagonally through the picture. Reflected trees darken the edges; reflected cloud lights the middle. Nothing anchors the view — there is no bank, no bridge, no horizon and no sky except as something mirrored.
The nearly square format matters. Monet's earlier pond pictures had divided into bands of land, water and air; here he has thrown out that structure entirely and painted the water's surface as the whole of the visible world. The picture reads as both a flat decorated plane and a deep space, and it will not settle into either.
The midpoint of an obsession
Monet painted the water garden roughly 250 times over two and a half decades. The sequence runs from relatively straightforward views of the pond and its Japanese bridge in the 1890s to the vast, near-abstract compositions he made between 1914 and 1926 for the murals now installed at the Musée de l'Orangerie in Paris.
This canvas, from a group painted between 1903 and 1908, sits at the hinge. The spatial experiment that produces the Orangerie rooms is already complete here; what remains to change is the scale.
Changes under the surface
The floating, effortless quality of the finished picture is misleading. Monet himself described the water-lily paintings as an obsession, and technical examination of this canvas has found a great many significant alterations made while the work was in progress — the composition was argued with, repeatedly, before it arrived at its apparent ease.
It sold well and quickly. Durand-Ruel and Bernheim-Jeune bought it jointly from Monet in June 1909 for 14,000 francs; it went to the playwright Henri Bernstein for 20,000, returned to Durand-Ruel that August, and eventually entered the Art Institute of Chicago in 1933 with the Ryerson collection.
Close reading
Reading the work, detail by detail
By 1906 Monet had removed the bridge, bank, and horizon from the water garden. Enlargement shows a painting that is still observational but organized almost entirely as a surface.
1.The lilies hold their shape against moving water
The blossoms are compact touches of pink and cream; the pads are flatter green ovals. Around them, blue and violet strokes run more freely. Their different handling lets the flowers seem to rest on a surface that never stops shifting.
2.Vertical reflections interrupt horizontal water
Dark vertical bands descend through the pond, contradicting the horizontal spread of pads. The crossing directions make the surface feel deep and flat at once: a plane of paint carrying the image of space above it.
3.The frame cuts a fragment from an endless field
Nothing closes the pond at the top or establishes a foreground at the bottom. Pads enter and leave at the edges. The cropping makes the canvas feel like one selected interval from water continuing beyond it.
Timeline
1903
Monet begins the group of water-lily canvases to which this painting belongs.
1909
Bought jointly from the artist by Durand-Ruel and Bernheim-Jeune in June for 14,000 francs.
1914
Monet begins the large-scale water-lily panels intended for the state, later installed at the Musée de l'Orangerie.
1933
Enters the Art Institute of Chicago with the Ryerson collection.
Frequently asked questions
How many water lily paintings did Monet make?
Around 250, made between the late 1890s and his death in 1926 — all of them from the water garden he had built at Giverny.
How does this relate to the Orangerie murals in Paris?
It is a direct precursor. The Orangerie panels, painted between 1914 and 1926 and installed in two oval rooms in the Tuileries, take the idea visible here — the water's surface as the entire subject — and expand it to room scale.
Why is the canvas almost square?
The square format removes the horizontal banding of land, water and sky that a landscape shape encourages, which let Monet concentrate the whole picture on the surface of the pond.
Where is this painting now?
At the Art Institute of Chicago, in the Mr. and Mrs. Martin A. Ryerson Collection (accession number 1933.1157).
