Nymphéas (Musée Marmottan Monet, 1916–19)

This Nymphéas (Water-Lilies) is a tall canvas, 200 × 180 cm, that Claude Monet painted of the pond in his garden at Giverny between 1916 and 1919. It is unsigned, and it came to the Musée Marmottan Monet in Paris with the bequest of the painter's son Michel Monet in 1966 (inv. 5117). It is number 1850 in the Wildenstein catalogue raisonné.

What you're looking at

The picture is divided into two zones. On the left, a dark mass of willow hangs down from the top edge and plunges into its own reflection, a column of deep green and violet strokes that runs nearly to the bottom of the canvas. On the right the water opens out into a broad field of pale violet and lilac, the reflected sky. Long, thin strands of willow drop through it, painted as single green threads.

Lily pads are spread across the middle band: rounded shapes in slate, green and blue-grey, some edged in dull red. A few pink flowers sit among them, and a single white-and-pink bloom glows in the upper left. At lower left, a wedge of bright grass green marks the bank, and at lower right a pale yellow-green pad catches the light. These two touches of green anchor a composition that is otherwise all suspension.

This canvas is distinctive for that combination: a strong vertical willow on one side, an open lilac expanse on the other, with the bank brought into the corner. It feels like an afternoon view from the edge of the pond, looking out under the tree.

Where and when it was painted

By 1916 Monet was working daily on what he called his Grandes Décorations. He painted on the bank of the pond in good weather and in his new studio, built in 1915, during the rest of the day. The tall format used here, slightly higher than it is wide, recurs in a group of Marmottan canvases from the same years and seems to have been used for vertical motifs, like a willow seen from below.

How it was painted

The handling is broad and quick. The willow column is built from overlapping vertical strokes, wet into wet, with violet laid over green. The lilac water is made of long horizontal and diagonal drags, letting the canvas show in places. The pads are scrubbed in with a few rounded marks each. Like many works from the Michel Monet bequest, the picture was not signed, and some edges are left unresolved.

How this version differs

The Musée Marmottan Monet holds several canvases of exactly this size. In another 200 × 180 cm Nymphéas, the willow reflection becomes a soft lilac cascade on the right; in Water-Lilies, Reflection of a Weeping Willow, the lilies nearly disappear. This one keeps the clearest separation between tree, pads and sky, and it has the most saturated violet. The Blue Water Lilies at the Orsay is a square cousin in a cooler blue.

A detail to look for

In the upper right corner, above the open lilac water, Monet paints a strip of pale green and lemon with a few horizontal strokes: the far bank of the pond and the light on it, seen reflected. It is easy to miss, but it changes the space of the picture. Without it, the violet field would be bottomless; with it, the pond has a far edge, and the willow strands in front seem to hang in a real volume of air. Monet used such clues sparingly in the late canvases. Comparing this one with the Marmottan's more abstract squares shows how much a single strip of reflected bank can do.

Where to see it

Michel Monet's bequest made the Marmottan the main place to study the late work of Claude Monet; its Monet collection is displayed in a dedicated gallery, though individual canvases rotate and travel to exhibitions. For the garden that inspired them, see Giverny, and for the whole sequence, the Water Lilies series.