Water-Lily Pond (Bassin aux nymphéas, 1918–19)

Bassin aux nymphéas (Water-Lily Pond) is a canvas Claude Monet painted at Giverny between 1918 and 1919, measuring 73 × 105 cm. Unsigned and visibly unfinished, it came to the Musée Marmottan Monet in Paris with the bequest of Michel Monet in 1966 (inv. 5105). It is number 1882 in the Wildenstein catalogue raisonné, and it is one of the most violent-looking pictures Monet ever made.

What you're looking at

You are looking across the pond toward a bank of trees. The upper half is a thicket of foliage, painted in hooked, slashing strokes of crimson, scarlet and orange mixed with sage green, olive and a little violet. Through the middle runs the water, a horizontal band where the same reds and greens repeat as reflection, laid in longer, flatter streaks. At the bottom, a few lily pads are no more than squiggles of green and yellow on white.

The most surprising feature is the white. Large areas of bare, primed canvas show through everywhere: between strokes, at the corners, along the lower edge. The picture is as much drawing as painting, and the white reads as light flashing off water.

The red is the key to this version. In Monet's late years his cataracts distorted his color vision, making blues hard to see and pushing everything toward red and yellow, and canvases like this are often discussed in that light. Others see in them a deliberate, expressive freedom. Both readings are argued by scholars, and the painting supports either.

Where and when it was painted

In 1918–19 Monet was 78 and still painting outdoors at the edge of the pond as well as in his studio. Alongside the large decorative panels, he made a series of smaller, rapid canvases of the pond and its surroundings, including the Japanese footbridge and the rose arches, in which form becomes increasingly gestural. This canvas belongs to that late, spontaneous group. He would have cataract surgery on his right eye in 1923.

The canvas is modest in size, 73 × 105 cm, which suggests it may have been painted at least partly outdoors, at the pond's edge, rather than in the big studio. Its speed and its unfinished state fit that: it reads like a record of a single session in which Monet set down the whole motif in color and then stopped.

How it was painted

The brush moves fast and at full arm's length. Strokes are long, curving and often painted with a single loaded charge of color. There is almost no blending: colors sit side by side or on top of one another, and Monet leaves the canvas bare where he has not yet painted, rather than toning it first. The result looks like a sketch, but on a canvas of substantial size.

How this version differs

The Geneva Corner of the Water-Lily Pond of 1918 shows a similar view of bank and water, but in dense, closely worked strokes. The Albertina's The Water Lily Pond keeps a calm golden reflection. Here everything is moving and on fire. Its nearest relatives in the Marmottan are the late Japanese Bridge pictures and the long Nymphéas (1917–19), also loosely painted on bare canvas. Within the Water Lilies series it marks the far edge of Monet's late experiments.

Painting with damaged sight

Monet first noticed problems with his eyes around 1908, and by 1912 he had been diagnosed with cataracts in both eyes. His letters from the late 1910s and early 1920s complain that he could no longer judge colors and had to rely on the labels of his paint tubes and on the order of colors on his palette. After the operation on his right eye in 1923, and with corrective tinted lenses, he reportedly found some of his recent canvases too red and reworked or destroyed several. Pictures like this one, which survived in the studio, are therefore precious evidence of how he painted during the worst of his illness.

Where to see it

The Musée Marmottan Monet holds the largest group of late works by Claude Monet, almost all from the family bequest, and shows them in a dedicated gallery. Works rotate and travel. For the garden the painting records, see Giverny.