The Water Lily Pond

Claude Monet

Contemporary-Art.org
Keywords: WaterLilyPond

Work Overview

Commenting on what he called his "water landscapes," Monet once declared, "One instant, one aspect of nature contains it all." No wonder he dedicated much of the last 30 years of his life to painting them, forging on even when cataracts began threatening his vision in 1912.  


Critics called the Impressionist paintings messy and suggested the works were less about a creative vision than Monet's blurred vision. As his eyes were failing, critics sneered at Monet's color palette and his argument that his depiction of flora, water, and light was an artistic choice, spurring an initial disdain of Monet's now-revered series. 


For 20 years following Monet's death in 1926, his Water Lilies series was largely ignored, with many paintings sitting forgotten in his Giverny studio. But in the 1950s, curators rediscovered Monet, crediting him with paving the path to the fashionable art of the day. By 1955, the Museum of Modern Art had purchased their first Monet from this series, and it quickly became one of the famed museum’s most popular holdings. 


In 1958, a terrible fire broke out at MoMA. While many paintings were saved, including Georges-Pierre Seurat's A Sunday on La Grande Jatte —1884, six were damaged. Two of these were recently acquired Water Lilies works. The loss devastated art lovers, who sent sympathy letters to the museum. In 1959 MoMA got another crack at owning part of the series when it acquired a massive Water Lilies triptych.