Waterlily pond, green harmony

The Water Lilies series, created by the French painter Claude Monet, is one of his most famous works. It is in Giverny, in a small village on the banks of the Seine, that the artist observed them. Throughout his career, and until his death in 1926, he will paint them.

It was Monet himself who had this water lily pond built on his property in Giverny, in 1893. Despite the administrative difficulties encountered, the artist persevered in the construction of his Japanese "water garden", composed of exotic plants and covered with white water lilies, otherwise known as the famous water lilies.

The importance of the wooden bridge that spans the basin is also present in this work, which refers to the artist's pronounced taste for Japanese art. This is evidenced by the collection of Japanese prints and decorative objects that the artist possessed, as did many of his contemporaries at the time.

The general symmetry of the composition emphasizes the harmony sought by the painter. At the heart of this harmony of nature, he wishes to capture the light, the moment, in an impressionist approach. The artist works on the ground, in nature, and tries to seize, with a quick touch, the changes of the light. Graphically, this translates into a nervous touch, visible touches on the canvas, imprecise contours.

Working in series allows Monet to study the transformations that light undergoes on the same motif. In the Water Lilies series, just like the Millstone series that the artist created around 1890, he depicted the passing of time, thanks to the effects of light and atmosphere, which made his compositions of the same subject change colors, translating his immediate feelings about what he perceived.

Until the end of his life, the artist went further and further in his research on the fragmentation of the brushstroke and the colors, until he "came close to abstraction".