Water Lily Pond

Claude Monet (French, 1840–1926)

1900

Medium
Oil on canvas
Classification
Painting
Dimensions
89.8 × 101 cm (35 3/8 × 39 3/4 in.); Framed: 112.4 × 122.6 × 10.2 cm (44 1/4 × 48 1/4 × 4 in.)
Culture
France
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago, Painting and Sculpture of Europe
Credit line
Mr. and Mrs. Lewis Larned Coburn Memorial Collection
Rights
Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
Who can see it
Little Ones profiles and older: it shows gentle subjects for the very young. How works are placed

View at the Art Institute of Chicago

About this work

In 1893, three years after buying property at Giverny, Claude Monet began transforming the marshy ground behind his home into a pond, on the narrow end of which he built a Japanese-style wood bridge. Adding both exotic and domestic plantings, including his famous water lilies, the artist created the garden that would be one of his principal subjects for the rest of his life. Water Lily Pond was among the 18 similar versions of the motif that he made in 1899–1900; their common theme was the mingling of the lilies with reflections of other vegetation on the pool’s surface.

Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0