Waterlily Pond, Green Harmony by Claude Monet (postcard)

Description

Waterlily Pond, Green Harmony by Claude Monet (postcard)
#: 594
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Claude Monet, France 1840 – 1926
Water lily pond, green harmony [Le bassin aux nymphéas, harmonie verte] 1899
oil on canvas - canvas 89.0 (h) x 93.5 (w) cm
Musée d'Orsay, Paris, Bequest of Count Isaac de Camondo 1911
© RMN (Musée d'Orsay) / Hervé Lewandowski
"Aside from painting and gardening, I'm good for nothing" Claude Monet1
Not only did Monet create this painting, he also made everything depicted in it. Monet had settled in Giverny in 1883, with Alice Hoschedé and their large, melded family. By 1890 he had enough funds to buy their home of seven years, and in 1893 he acquired further land, adjacent to the house. Diverting a small stream, Monet began work on the famous pond and magnificent gardens which consumed his attention, providing the main subject for his work, until his death in 1926.
In 1899 Monet painted twelve canvases, mostly square-format, of the pond in different light conditions but from the same vantage point; a further six paintings, in which he shifted his position to include the left side of the bridge, followed in 1900. In these works he celebrates his garden of massed flowering plants, with the water visible through the leaves and flowers, showing reflections of the sky and of the willows, reeds and other foliage around the pond.
This painting is one of those exhibited at Durand-Ruel in November–December 1900. In his review, Gustave Geffroy described
a minuscule pool where some mysterious corollas blossom … calm immobile, rigid, and deep like a mirror, upon which white water lilies blossom forth, a pool surrounded by soft and hanging greenery which reflects itself in it.2
In Water lily pond¸ green harmony, from his first extended group of paintings of his water garden, Monet compresses the space. He uses the Japanese bridge to anchor his composition but the bridge is truncated so that it no longer links the banks, appearing instead to levitate above the pond.3 Its arch bisects the canvas, the upper half rendered in an array of greens, grey-blue and pale yellows, while in the lower half he uses a tapestry of pale blues, greens and pinks to convey the water lilies.
The surface of the pond—the horizontal marks and small dabs of the water lilies and pads interrupted by vertical strokes of greens, yellows and white of the reflections of the vegetation above—seem almost thick enough to walk over. There is only the slightest suggestion of sky, as Monet deftly closes off the background, and all sides of the scene. Along the bottom edge of the canvas, patches of scumbled maroon and violet paint—and a fringe of green grass down the right side—suggest the bank of the pond.
In later series Monet foregoes the bridge, banks, and indeed any material context for the pond, in order to concentrate on the surface of the water and the reflections within.
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Water Lilies is a series of approximately 250 oil paintings by French Impressionist Claude Monet (1840–1926). The paintings depict his flower garden at his home in Giverny, and were the main focus of his artistic production during the last thirty years of his life. Many of the works were painted while Monet suffered from cataracts.
Monet's long-standing preference for producing and exhibiting a series of paintings related by subject and perspective began in 1889, with at least ten paintings done at the Valley of the Creuse, which were shown at the Galerie Georges Petit. Among his other famous series are his Haystacks.
During the 1920s, the state of France built a pair of oval rooms at the Musée de l'Orangerie as a permanent home for eight water lily murals by Monet. The exhibit opened to the public on 16 May 1927, a few months after Monet's death. Sixty water lily paintings from around the world were assembled for a special exhibition at the Musée de l'Orangerie in 1999.
The paintings are on display at museums all over the world, including the Princeton University Art Museum, Musée Marmottan Monet, the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Saint Louis Art Museum, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri,
the Carnegie Museum of Art, the National Museum of Wales, the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nantes, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Portland Art Museum and the Legion of Honor. In 2020, The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston celebrated its 150-anniversary with some of Monet's Water Lilies paintings.
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