Water Lilies
| Support Type: | Canvas |
| Paint Type: | Oil Paint |
| Current Location: | Art Institute of Chicago |
| Location History: | The artist (d. 1926); sold to Durand-Ruel, Paris (3/4 interest), and Bernheim-Jeune, Paris (1/4 interest), June 3, 1909, for 14,000 francs [this and the following per Durand-Ruel, Paris, stock book for 1901–13 (no. 9082, as Les nymphéas, paysage d’eau, série de 1906), as confirmed by Paul-Louis Durand-Ruel and Flavie Durand-Ruel, Durand-Ruel Archives, to the Art Institute of Chicago, Feb. 21, 2013, curatorial object file]; sold to Henri Bernstein, Paris, May 29, 1909, for 20,000 francs [see previous: the Durand-Ruel Archives notes that “the apparent chronological anomaly between the dates of the purchase and of the sale is not unusual”]; sold to Durand-Ruel, Paris, Aug. 9, 1909, for 20,000 francs [per Durand-Ruel, Paris, stock book for 1901–13 (no. 9134, as Les nymphéas, paysage d’eau, série de 1906), as confirmed by Paul-Louis Durand-Ruel and Flavie Durand-Ruel, Durand-Ruel Archives, to the Art Institute of Chicago, Feb. 21, 2013, curatorial object file]; on deposit to Durand-Ruel, New York, Apr. 1911 [per Durand-Ruel, New York, deposit book for 1894–1925 (no. 7606, as Les nymphéas, paysage d’eau, série de 1906), as confirmed by Paul-Louis Durand-Ruel and Flavie Durand-Ruel, Durand-Ruel Archives, to the Art Institute of Chicago, Feb. 21, 2013, curatorial object file]; sold to Durand-Ruel, New York, Feb. 10, 1914 [this and the following per Durand-Ruel, New York, stock book for 1904–24 (no. 3768, as Les nymphéas, paysage d’eau, série de 1906), as confirmed by Paul-Louis Durand-Ruel and Flavie Durand-Ruel, Durand-Ruel Archives, to the Art Institute of Chicago, Feb. 21, 2013, curatorial object file]; sold to Martin A. Sold by Durand-Ruel, New York, to Martin A. Ryerson (d. 1932), Chicago, Feb. 10, 1914, for $5,000 [see previous; also a purchase receipt on Durand-Ruel letterhead, dated February 10, 1914, details that this painting (no. 3768, Monet, Les nymphéas, paysage d’eau, 1906) was acquired by M. A. Ryerson, in addition to two other paintings (no. 3668, Monet, La cabane de douaniers, 1897 (cat. 35); and no. 3646, Monet, Waterloo Bridge, London,1903) (cat. 39) for $20,000, photocopy in curatorial object file]; bequeathed to the Art Institute of Chicago, 1933. |
The painting pulls you immediately into a world without edges or exits there is no sky, no horizon, no bank to stand on. Monet has given us only water, and yet the water contains everything: the reflection of clouds drifting somewhere above, the soft memory of trees along an unseen shore, and the lilies themselves floating like small, quiet thoughts on the surface. It is as though the entire universe has been compressed into this one still pond. What strikes you first is how little is "solid" here. The green pads and pink blooms are real enough, but the blue-violet water around them is doing something stranger it is simultaneously the pond and the sky, the surface and the depth. Monet seems to be saying that the boundary between things is not as firm as we believe. What looks like earth reflects heaven; what looks like stillness is actually in constant, trembling motion. There is a peacefulness here that is not empty but full full of shimmer, of breath, of the sense that time has slowed to the pace of a lily pad drifting an inch in an afternoon. The loose, almost restless brushwork tells you this calm was hard-won, not given. Monet painted these water gardens obsessively in his old age, nearly blind, and that knowledge deepens what you see: a man trying to hold onto beauty as his sight failed him, finding it most completely in a garden he had designed himself. At its heart, the painting feels like a meditation on impermanence on how light changes everything from one moment to the next, and how the most beautiful things are precisely the ones that cannot be held still. The water lilies do not grip the water; they simply rest on it, and that lightness is the whole point. Monet seems to suggest that this is the only sane way to live in a world that is always shifting not to fight the current, but to float.