Claude Monet’s water lily paintings

Monet’s grand late paintings are not just a set of pictures but a universe that envelops the observer. Perhaps Monet’s most well known is being the “father of Impressionism” is best exemplified here with this series (in the Orangerie, Paris). In one sense, they show almost nothing; a bit of water at the end of the artist’s garden. In another, they contain almost everything the famous art movement was known for – light, air, water, space, time and energy.

It was at the first Impressionist exhibit of 1874 that the term “Impressionism” originated from the title of Monet’s 1872 work, Impression: Sunrise. And in these works from the early 1900s one sees Monet’s water lily picture plane completely filled with an impression of light and color as reflected from the surface of a lily pond. Neither people, land, nor the horizon line break the observer’s focused gaze into this cool and soothing scene of a pond on a warm summer’s day. His water lilies seem amazingly modern for its nearly abstract qualities, even more so considering its date of execution.

By the time the water lily paintings appeared, Impressionism had become widely accepted in the art world and highly influential with collectors and young artists alike. Monet favored painting directly from nature (en plein air), setting up his canvases in the outdoors to capture his fleeting “impressions” of a scene as it appeared to him under different conditions of weather or lighting. He had installed an ornamental water garden that proved to be the focal point for dozens of his explorations of color and light and it was these water lily scenes which began as a non-intentional series of color and light which soon became associated with his name and his repetitive studies of the various features of the French countryside around him. A magnificent study of color and light, Monet’s water lily paintings are his quintessential Impressionistic accomplishment.

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