Water Lily Pond Water Irises

Claude Monet

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Keywords: WaterLilyPondWaterIrises

Work Overview

The Japanese Bridge (The Water-Lily Pond, Water Irises)
Claude Monet
Date: 1900
Style: Impressionism
Series: The Japanese Bridge
Genre: landscape


In exchange for some of Monet's grandest works, the nation honored him by displaying these at the Musée de l'Orangerie, just as he dreamed. Two specially made oval exhibition rooms were built to house his massive Water Lilies, creating a complete panorama of the painter's favorite views. 


As MoMA curator Ann Temkin explains:
In early Impressionism you had these views of nature where you were out looking at a seaside or out looking at a field and there were markers of location that you could understand, "Here I am as a person. Here's the view that the painter is portraying for me." With the Water Lily panels, he's changed it completely so that rather than you being larger than the view that you're looking at on an easel-sized canvas, somehow you have become immersed in the scene of this water lily pond. All the normal markers, like the edge of the water or the sky or the distant trees, have disappeared, and you’re just right in the face of those water lilies and the surface of the water with the clouds reflected from above you become lost in this expanse of water and of light.


In this way, Monet's unique vision forever changed Impressionism, creating a new form that inspired untold artists and admirers.