Image: public domain, courtesy of The Art Institute of Chicago

Water Lilies

Claude Monet, 1906

Monet made a water garden with a lily pond at his home in Giverny, and he painted it again and again. Here we see only the surface of the water, where floating lilies meet the reflections of trees and clouds.

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Did you know?

Monet painted about 250 pictures of his water lily pond.
In his earlier pond paintings you can see a little Japanese bridge, but here there is no bridge and no sky, only water.
The canvas is almost square, about 90 by 94 centimetres.
In 1908 Monet wrote to his friend, the critic Gustave Geffroy, that these landscapes of water and reflections had become an obsession.
In 1909 he showed 48 water lily paintings together at the Durand-Ruel gallery in Paris, and the show was a great success.
His largest water lily paintings, huge murals, were installed in two oval rooms of the Orangerie in Paris after his death.

About the artist

Claude Monet (1840–1926) was born in Paris, grew up by the sea in Le Havre, and from 1883 lived and painted at Giverny in Normandy.

He was the guiding spirit of Impressionism, which took its name from his painting Impression, Sunrise, and he is beloved for his haystacks, cathedrals and water lilies.

As a teenager he earned pocket money drawing funny caricatures of local people, and later he lovingly tended a garden with a Japanese bridge that he painted again and again.

Claude Monet ›

Where it is today: The Art Institute of Chicago · Museum page