Nymphéas [Waterlilies] (National Gallery of Australia)

Nymphéas [Waterlilies] is a large canvas of about 1914–17 by Claude Monet of his lily pond at Giverny, in the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra (NGA 79.2858). Bought in 1979, it comes from the years when Monet was working toward his great decorative panels, and it was still in his studio when he died.

What you're looking at

The canvas is about two meters tall and almost as wide, and it is filled with water painted in violet, lavender and pale blue, the reflection of an open sky. In the middle, islands of lily pads drift in a loose ring: round pads in bright yellow-green and lime, outlined in darker strokes, with pink and coral flowers and a few red buds among them. A few more pads float near the top right, and in the far upper left corner a single violet flower stands out.

At the right, the water darkens into green and blue, with vertical strokes that suggest the reflections of trees or iris leaves on the bank. Across the bottom runs something unusual for the late lily pictures: a strip of the near bank itself, a thick band of grass and plants painted in saturated green and electric blue with touches of violet. It gives the viewer a place to stand.

The color is bold and the brushwork broad, much freer than in the canvases of 1903–08.

The late pond

Monet had painted the surface of his pond since 1897. After a lull following the deaths of his wife Alice in 1911 and his son Jean in 1914, and with his eyesight troubled by cataracts, he returned to it in 1914 with a new ambition: a cycle of huge decorative panels. He built a large studio at Giverny in 1915 for the purpose, and painted dozens of big canvases, many of them studies or independent works, alongside the panels that went to the Musée de l'Orangerie in 1927. The gallery notes that because Monet seldom let these canvases leave his studio, most are neither signed nor dated.

How this version differs

Most late lily canvases leave out the bank. This one keeps a foreground band of vegetation, as do the large irises-and-lilies works of the same years such as the Virginia Irises by the Pond and the Marmottan's Water Lilies and Agapanthus. Compared with the darker, more broken Museum Barberini Water Lilies of 1914–17, the Canberra canvas is lighter and clearer, its lilies drawn more firmly. The Orangerie panel Green Reflections shows where these experiments led.

How it was painted

The water is laid in broad, sweeping horizontal and diagonal strokes, the paint thinner in the violet areas and thicker in the pads. The pads are drawn with a loaded brush as round shapes with dark outlines. The bank is the most energetic passage, with vertical and curving strokes of pure blue and green side by side.

Where to see it

The National Gallery of Australia bought the painting in 1979, during the period when it was building its international collection before opening in Canberra in 1982. It is shown in the gallery's international art rooms. For the series see Monet's Water Lilies; for the garden, Giverny; for the late panels, the Orangerie; and for other places to see Monet, Where to See Monet's Paintings.