Water Lilies (1906)

About this work

Artist

Claude Monet (1840–1926)

Year

1906

Medium

Oil on canvas

Original size

89.9 × 94.1 cm

Collection

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Impressionism

Series

Water Lilies (Nymphéas)

A nearly square canvas from the group of water-lily paintings Monet made between 1903 and 1908, when the pond at Giverny had become his only subject. There is no bank, sky or horizon: the whole picture is the surface of the water, with clusters of lilies drifting across the reflections. Monet had bought the Giverny property in 1890 and dug the water garden three years later; he went on to paint it roughly 250 times. This 1906 version sits at the midpoint of that journey, after the straightforward views of the Japanese bridge and before the vast, near-abstract panels he prepared for the Orangerie in Paris. It is signed and dated at the lower right and came to the Art Institute of Chicago with the collection of Martin A. Ryerson. Its loosened brushwork, where strokes of violet and green sit side by side without blending, is why the late Monet is read as a bridge to abstraction.

This print reproduces the whole work, uncropped, from a high-resolution scan of the original. The original is in the public domain.