1906
oil
canvas
From the collection of Art Institute of Chicago
Water Lilies is a 1906 oil by Claude Monet, a Impressionism work, held at Art Institute of Chicago.
This painting shows a flat green surface with floating pink and white water lilies. It’s part of Monet’s big series from his garden in Giverny. He painted these over and over as the light changed. Monet’s pond was his whole world late in life. He built the Japanese bridge himself. Over time his brushstrokes grew looser, almost dissolving the scene into pure color. His water lily paintings led to huge murals in Paris. See one yourself at the Art Institute of Chicago.
Little did Claude Monet know that the water garden he created three years after buying his Giverny, France, property in 1890 would become his primary inspiration over the next two and a half decades. These paintings, numbering around 250, mark Monet’s artistic journey from more straightforward depictions of the pond spanned by the wooden Japanese bridge to the monumental and near-abstract series on the water lily theme he made in preparation for his murals at the Musée de l’Orangerie in Paris between 1914 and 1926. Water Lilies , one of a group of paintings on the subject made between 1903…
The artist (d. 1926); sold to Durand-Ruel, Paris (3/4 interest), and Bernheim-Jeune, Paris (1/4 interest), June 3, 1909, for 14,000 francs [this and the following per Durand-Ruel, Paris, stock book for 1901–13 (no. 9082, as Les nymphéas, paysage d’eau, série de 1906), as confirmed by Paul-Louis Durand-Ruel and Flavie Durand-Ruel, Durand-Ruel Archives, to the Art Institute of Chicago, Feb. 21, 2013, curatorial object file]; sold to Henri Bernstein, Paris, May 29, 1909, for 20,000 francs [see previous: the Durand-Ruel Archives notes that “the apparent chronological anomaly between the dates of…
Paris, Galeries Durand-Ruel, Les nymphéas: Séries de paysages d’eau par Claude Monet, May 6–June 5, 1909, cat. 15, as Série 1906. Saint Louis, Noonan-Kocian Gallery, Tableaux Durand-Ruel (circuit exhibition, held Oct. 1911–Jan. 1912); Chicago, Auditorium Hotel; Cincinnati, no cat. no. Toledo (Ohio) Museum of Art, Paintings by French Impressionists and Post-Impressionists, Nov. 7–Dec. 12, 1937, cat. 16 (ill.). Bloomington, Ill., Scottish Rite Temple, Central Illinois Art Exposition, Mar. 19–Apr. 8, 1939, cat. 26. Chicago, Arts Club of Chicago, Origins of Modern Art, Apr. 2–30, 1940, cat. 63.…
Read the full account in the museum source.
Oscar-Claude Monet was born in Paris on November 14, 1840, and raised from the age of five in Le Havre, where he began selling charcoal caricatures as a teenager.
See the richer artist pageYour cart is empty
Explore artworks →
