Water Lilies
1906
Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
89.9 × 94.1 cm (35 3/8 × 37 1/16 in.); Framed: 103.2 × 107 × 5.8 cm (40 5/8 × 42 1/8 × 2 1/4 in.)
Classification
oil on canvas
Department
Painting and Sculpture of Europe
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
16568
Art Historical Context
Claude Monet’s *Water Lilies* (1906) captures the luminous surface of the pond at his Giverny garden in France, where the artist spent his later years immersed in nature. As a founder of Impressionism, Monet moved beyond early landscapes to create more than 250 paintings of these water lilies, using loose brushwork and layered color to record the shifting effects of light and reflection rather than precise botanical detail. This particular canvas, now in the Art Institute of Chicago, exemplifies his lifelong pursuit of painting the ephemeral. Painted in oil on canvas, the work’s square format...
About the Artist
Claude Monet · 1840–1926
Claude Monet, born Oscar-Claude Monet on November 14, 1840, in Paris and raised in Le Havre, Normandy, began his artistic journey as a successful teenage caricaturist. His formal training started at the Le Havre secondary school of the arts in 1851, where he received his first drawing lessons from Jacques-François Ochard. Around 1858, he met Eugène Boudin, who became his pivotal mentor, introducin...