Waterlilies

On this day in 1840, one of the founders of French Impressionism, the great Claude Monet was born. Monet was the most consistent and prolific practitioner of the movement's philosophy. He continued to develop Impressionist assumptions throughout his long life. 

Water Lilies were the main focus of Monet's artistic production during the last thirty years of his life. He created approximately 250 oil paintings with these flowers. What's interesting, many of the works were painted while Monet suffered from cataracts — but today's painting is not one of them.

Every year, from spring to fall, the artist set up easels around the pond next to his home in Giverny so he could capture sensations on several canvases at once and rework them later in his workshop. The Waterlilies at MuMa, painted in 1904, are part of a suite of forty-eight canvases known as, "Waterlilies, a Series of Waterscapes"—shown at Durand-Ruel’s gallery in Paris in 1909.

In this painting Monet shows that he is a god of color. The Giverny garden became his laboratory that led to a genuine transformation of his paintings, where color prevailed over form. His undertaking signalled the abstraction that would be developed by the artists of the New York School in the wake of World War II.

See you tomorrow!

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