The Water Lily Pond aka Japanese Bridge

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The Water Lily Pond aka Japanese Bridge: Claude Monet

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Art Type: Oil Painting
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Claude Monet Oil Painting - The Water Lily Pond aka Japanese Bridge

Keywords: Water, Lily, Pond, Japanese, Bridge

Work Overview: Bridge over a Pond of Water Lilies
Artist: Claude Monet (French, Paris 1840–1926 Giverny)
Date: 1899
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 36 1/2 x 29 in. (92.7 x 73.7 cm)
Location: Musée d'Orsay, Paris

Claude Monet was the driving force behind the radical group of modern artists who became known as the 'Impressionists'. Influenced by Eugene Boudin (1824-98) and Johan Barthold Jongkind (1819-1891), Monet himself came to specialize in plein-air painting, in order to capture the momentary effects of light and colour. Other Impressionists who focused on outdoor work included Pissarro (1830-1903), Alfred Sisley (1839-99) and Renoir (1841-1919).

During the last thirty years of his life the Impressionist Claude Monet devoted himself to a series of famous landscape paintings of his water gardens at Giverny. Among these Water Lilies paintings (1897-1926) was a smaller series of eighteen views of the wooden Japanese footbridge over his pond, which he began in 1899. Four of the best-known of these Impressionist paintings include: The Japanese Footbridge (1899, National Gallery of Australia); Bridge over a Pond of Waterlilies (1899, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York); The Water-Lily Pond (1899, National Gallery, London); and the present work at the Musee d'Orsay.

This landscape painting was done at Giverny more than fifteen years after the Impressionist group had started to drift apart - for more on this, see: Impressionist Group Splits Up (1882) - but only some five years since he had begun - with the help of six gardners - to construct his water garden. Even so, by 1899, the garden along with the adjoining meadow and pond, had been transformed into an aquatic paradise filled with willows, irises and water lilies imported from Japan. One of the gardeners was employed specifically to maintain the plants in such a way as to suit Monet's painting.

This quiet reflective painting of the lily pond was one of twelve views, each painted from the same vantage point in 1899, which Monet exhibited the following year at the Paris gallery owned by Paul Durand-Ruel (1831-1922). (See: Impressionist Exhibitions in Paris (1874-86) for more details about the early shows.) With its dappled sunlight, and its orchestration of colour, tone and texture, it exemplifies Monet's en-plein-air approach to painting, in which he expresses his sensations as well as his observations. As usual, numerous short rapid brushstrokes and touches or dabs of pure paint (known as 'taches') have been used to create the water's flower-laden surface, a technique made easier by the invention of the flat, square, ferrule paintbrush, as opposed to the round brush. In order to indicate the textures and shapes of the foliage, paint has been applied layer on layer with a palette knife, until a thick crust is formed. The graceful curve of the Japanese footbridge bisects the painting, its mauve lines - tracked by green - harmonizing easily with the pond surface below and the green foliage above right. (Note: For more about the Impressionist style, see: Characteristics of Impressionism: 1870-1920.)

Admitting as early as 1901 to his obsession with painting the water garden, Monet would visit it at least three times a day to study the changing light, recording the details in his notebooks. He continued to paint his lily pond until he died, his compositions growing ever larger and more abstract. Indeed, in his last series, he ignores the banks and bridge entirely, and focuses exclusively on the surface of the water, creating a number of abstract paintings filled with watery colours and light. Hailed as a new style of abstract art, these works were studied closely in the 1940s by artists associated with all-over abstract expressionist painting, including Jackson Pollock (1912-56).

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In 1883 Monet moved to Giverny where he lived until his death. There, on the grounds of his property, he created a water garden 'for the purpose of cultivating aquatic plants', over which he built an arched bridge in the Japanese style.

In 1899, once the garden had matured, the painter undertook 17 views of the motif under differing light conditions. Surrounded by luxuriant foliage, the bridge is seen here from the pond itself, among an artful arrangement of reeds and willow leaves.

In 1893, Monet, a passionate horticulturist, purchased land with a pond near his property in Giverny, intending to build something "for the pleasure of the eye and also for motifs to paint." The result was his water-lily garden. In 1899, he began a series of eighteen views of the wooden footbridge over the pond, completing twelve paintings, including the present one, that summer. The vertical format of the picture, unusual in this series, gives prominence to the water lilies and their reflections on the pond.

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