The Japanese Bridge or The Lily Pond

The Japanese Bridge or The Lily Pond is a painting by Claude Monet dated 1900, from the second group of views of the wooden footbridge over the water-lily pond in his garden at Giverny. It is in a private collection. Public catalogue data give it the Wildenstein number 1631 and a size of about 89 by 92 centimeters. The image published under this title shows a version with a garden path and a bank of purple irises in the foreground, a combination that also appears in neighboring numbers of the catalogue, so its exact identity needs checking against the catalogue raisonné.

What you're looking at

The bridge crosses the pond in a shallow arch from the center of the canvas to the right edge. Its rails are painted in white, pale gray and lilac, and it catches the light against the dense greenery behind it.

Above the bridge, a weeping willow pours down from the top left in long, ribbon-like strokes of yellow-green, olive, blue and red. To its left, a patch of pink sky shows between trees. On the far bank the foliage is a wall of green, gold and rust.

The foreground is crowded with color. A bank of irises fills the lower center and right, their flowers painted in purple, magenta and pink on tall green leaves. At the lower left, a path curves into the picture, painted in strong red and orange, so that the ground itself seems to glow. On the pond, under the bridge, the water is red-orange too, crossed by horizontal bands of lily pads in green and pink.

The 1900 bridge: what makes this version distinct

Monet first painted the footbridge in a group of about a dozen canvases in 1899, in cool, even greens, such as the Met's Bridge over a Pond of Water Lilies and the National Gallery of Art's The Japanese Footbridge. In 1900 he returned to it and widened the view. The new canvases take in more of the banks, the willow and the flowers, and they are often much warmer, with reds, pinks and oranges flooding the greens.

This picture is one of the hottest of the group. The red path and the reddish water give it an almost sunset intensity, and the irises turn the foreground into a flower garden rather than a simple bank. Compared with Philadelphia's Japanese Footbridge and the Water Lily Pool, Giverny of 1899, it is far less symmetrical and far more crowded.

The garden at Giverny

Monet bought the land across the road from his house in 1893 and diverted a stream to create a pond, which he planted with water lilies and crossed with a wooden footbridge in the Japanese style, inspired by the woodblock prints he collected. Irises, willows and bamboo grew along the banks. By 1900 the garden had matured, and it became his main subject for the rest of his life.

How it was painted

The canvas was painted in the garden, in summer light. The willow is laid in long, loaded strokes that follow the hanging branches; the irises in short, vertical touches; the lily pads in horizontal dashes. Monet set warm and cool colors side by side, red against green, purple against yellow, to make the scene vibrate.

Where to see it

The painting is in a private collection and is not on public view. Related bridges in museums are gathered in our Japanese Footbridge series hub and Where to See Monet. For the garden see Giverny, and for the painter Claude Monet.