Information About Water Lilies by Monet
Monet's style of painting as well as his most famous work, Waterlilies, is explored. For full understanding, it's important to take a brief look into the rebellion of the impressionist movement and leads into Monet's inspiration, creation and the lasting impact of his life-affirming work in Waterlilies.
Monet's Rebellion
Claude Monet is best known as an impressionist, a once insipid term used by the established artists of the late nineteenth century. Along with fellow impressionists, namely Degas, Cassat, and Renoir, these artists were largely rejected by the traditional art community for their seemingly rebellious, even radical, approach to painting. However, what began as an insult by the establishment, has evolved into some of the most beloved paintings of all time by this impressionist group.
Impressionism
Most impressionists abandoned the traditional approach to painting within the confines of a studio, and instead, began their work in nature. As described by the National Museum of Art (2009) guide to impressionism, the most noticeable aspects of impressionism are both the subject matter and the technique. Landscapes were a favorite subject and they were created with vivid colors through rapidly applied brushstrokes. In addition to landscapes, everyday life, including the ordinary people that comprise it, were attractive subjects to the impressionist painters; showing the simplistic beauty or the sad reality of life, both nature and humanity, was the goal of impressionism. Impressionism focused on the emotional response one feels to their environment.
Inspiration
Monet is best known for his mesmerizing landscapes. Upon conception of his masterpiece, Nymphéas (Water Lilies), Claude Oscar Monet said to a friend, "Imagine a circular room...covered with [paintings of] water, dotted with these [water lily] plants to the very horizon, walls of a transparency alternately green and mauve, the calm and silence of the still waters reflecting the open blossoms. The tones are vague, deliciously nuanced, with a dreamlike delicacy." (Carnegie Museum of Art, 2009) Thus, his inspiration was sparked for the adornment of the Orangerie, the former greenhouse in the Tuileries gardens, outside of Paris' infamous Louvre Museum.
Features
Waterlilies consists of six prodigious panels, which occupied Monet's painting until his death in 1926, and are marked by, as described by the Carnegie Museum of Art (2009), "Lily pads and flowers at every edge, the partial reflection of the willow tree on the right, and the watery path that opens from the bottom to the top of the canvas make this aquatic paradise appear to extend beyond the frame and even beyond the scope of the viewer's sight." Monet's Waterlilies attempts to merge sky, land, and water, without discernible beginnings or endings and approaches the abstract in its form. In 1900, before the finality of his work, Monet exhibited 10 canvases of the pond, showing his single subject through various angles and periods of differing light. (The National Gallery, 2009) The multiple perspectives of the secluded and tranquil pond that inspired Monet, as well as the use of exquisite and emotional color, give Waterlilies a transcendent quality. In his own words, Monet sought to capture "the refuge of a peaceful meditation in the center of a flowering aquarium." (Museum of Modern Art, 2009)
Significance
As communicated by the Museum of Modern Art (2009), "The aim of his large Water Lilies paintings, Monet said, was to supply 'the illusion of an endless whole, of water without horizon or bank.' " Looking at even a panel from Waterlilies, encourages the viewer to revel in its enormity and beauty. With each brushstroke, the viewer is lifted into the immense passion and intensity that Monet felt for the secluded garden pond, with the self-built Japanese water bridge, at his home in Giverny. Monet's personal connection to his favorite landscape is evident; he is literally a part of it. Waterlilies allows the viewer to connect with, not only the beauty of nature, but the inner intensity of the artistic genius; looking at waterlilies makes one feel as though they are privy to an enchanted secret, that few have the opportunity to realize. It is a call to the simplistic beauty of nature, but even more significantly, the simplistic wonder and tremendous beauty of life.
