WATER LILIES: THE CLOUDS

Water Lilies: The Clouds, Claude Monet, 1915-1926

Oil on Canvas

79in x 502in

Housed in Musee d'Orangerie

Offered to the French state by the painted Claude Monet on the day that followed the Armistice of November 11, 1918 as a symbol of peace, the Water Lilies are installed according to plan at the Orangerie Museum in 1927, a few months after his death. It was designed as a real environment and crowns the Water Lilies cycle begun nearly thirty years before.

The set is one of the largest monumental achievements of the early twentieth century. The dimensions and the area covered by the paint surrounds and encompasses the viewer on nearly one hundred linear meters which unfold a landscape dotted with water lilies, water, willow branches, tree and cloud reflections, giving the 'illusion of an endless whole, a wave with no horizon and no shore' in the words of Monet. This unique masterpiece has no equivalent worldwide.

BACK TO LIST