Water Lilies Bookmark

Claude Monet (French, 1840–1926)
Water Lilies (detail), c. 1914–1917

Early critics dismissed Claude Monet’s paintings as hasty sketches. But in fact Monet set himself a goal that was remarkably difficult to achieve—the pursuit and capture of light, or rather, of its effects on sky, water, and land—and the evidence testifies that he succeeded brilliantly.

In 1903, Monet embarked on a series of canvases depicting the water garden at his home in Giverny. His scattered lily pads suggest the water’s surface, receding into space, and the pattern of light and dark beneath the lilies suggests the reflection on the water-sky and the trees on a distant bank. When Monet exhibited forty-eight of his waterscapes in 1909, critics compared them to poetry and music.