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Claude Monet, French, 1840-1926
Water Lilies, ca. 1916-1926
Oil on canvas
Unframed: 78 3/4 inches x 13 feet 11 1/2 inches (200.03 x 425.45 cm)
Framed: 80 3/4 inches x 14 feet 1 inches (205.11 x 429.26 cm)
Purchase: William Rockhill Nelson Trust, 57-26
© The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri
Location: Gallery P31
In 1893, Monet bought land adjacent to his property in Giverny, dug a pond and turned it into a Japanese-inspired water garden. This contemplative environment served as inspiration for a series of paintings over the next 20 years. Typical of others in the series, in this painting it is not so much the material presence of the lilies that has captured Monet’s attention, but rather the dream-like effects of mist and light on the delicate forms and colors in this liquid, floating world. Monet intended this painting to be the right-hand segment of a set of three, and he created four water lily triptychs in all. Because of the unusual scale of these pictures, the elimination of any hint of a spatial context and the increased boldness of Monet’s brushwork (compare to Boulevard des Capucines), these paintings have sometimes been described as precursors of Abstract Expressionism.
