Water Lily Pond Symphony in Rose

Claude Monet

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Keywords: WaterLilyPondSymphonyRose

Work Overview

The Water-Lily Pond, Symphony in Rose
Claude Monet
Date: 1900
Style: Impressionism
Series: The Japanese Bridge
Genre: landscape


In 1899, Monet completed setting the scene of his pond, despite his neighbors' protests. Across it, he built a quaint Japanese-style bridge. Monet was apparently quite pleased with how it turned out, as he painted the structure 17 times that very year, with each painting reflecting changes in lighting and weather conditions. 


In the later years of his life, Claude Monet produced approximately 250 paintings of water lilies, the assemblage of which is referred to as Nympheas. Painted through the artists' cataract-afflicted eyes from impressions of his Giverny garden, the Water Lilies series has come to be some of Monet's most renowned and lauded work. Perhaps the most well known example of the Water Lilies resides in Paris's Orangerie, a small museum in the gardens of Tuileries. The Orangerie houses two oval rooms whose walls are completely covered by the eight spectacular water lily murals that Monet created, which were unveiled mere months after his death, opening in May 1927. Other members of the Water Lily series can be found in respectable institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Musee Marmottan Manet in Paris, the Musee des Beaux-Arts de Nantes, and many others. Nympheas is not only one of Monet's most beloved collections of work, but also monumentally important and influential in the development of twentieth-century art.