Nymphéas (Water Lilies)

Artist Claude Monet (French, 1840–1926)

Date1908

Mediumoil on canvas

Dimensionscanvas: 94.8 × 89.9 cm (37 5/16 × 35 3/8 in.)
framed: 109.2 × 104.1 × 6.4 cm (43 × 41 × 2 1/2 in.)

ClassificationsPaintings

Credit LineMuseum Purchase

Terms

Object number1910.26

Label TextMonet—perhaps the name most closely associated with impressionism today—pushed the impressionist landscape to near-abstraction with his series depicting the water lilies he planted in his beloved garden at Giverny, a village 50 miles from Paris, where he lived for the last half of his life. By the final decades of the 19th century in France, impressionism’s focus on direct observation was being challenged by a new avant garde—symbolists and “post-impressionists”—who used landscape as a means of evoking inner emotion rather than pure atmospheric effect. The water lilies, with their floating calm and ethereal colors, can be seen as a reflection from the older master of impressionism on this new generation of impulses of the art world. Interestingly, some scholars have also linked the water lily series to Monet’s apparent interest in Buddhism, which was gained through his study of Japanese art. Meditation—including meditation inspired by gardens—is fundamental to Zen Buddhism, while the lotus flower is a symbol in Amida Buddhism of rebirth into the Western Pure Land. Acquired by WAM in 1910 from Monet’s gallery Durand Ruel, Water Lilies is one of the first paintings by Monet to have been purchased by an American art museum.ProvenanceThe artist to Durand-Ruel & Sons, Paris, France; purchased by the museum from Durand-Ruel, 1910, on the advice of Desmond Fitzgerald.

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