Claude Monet
French, 1840­1926
Water Lilies
1906
Oil on canvas
87.6 x 92.7 cm
Mr. and Mrs. Martin A. Ryerson Collection, 1933.1157

During the last 25 years of Monet’s life, he painted little else except waterscapes like this, which show the pond in his Japanese-style garden, and the water lilies that float on it. 

The earliest of these garden paintings show a Japanese bridge, trees, and sky as well as the pond. The view of water lilies here was very unconventional for its time. There is no horizon; the subject is the surface of the pond, which is at once a mirror of the sky above and a window into the world within the pool.