What is Water Lilies?
{{Use dmy dates|date=May 2020}} {{italic title}} [[File:Claude Monet - Water Lilies.JPG|thumb|''Water Lilies'' (1907), in the Museum of Fine Arts, [[Houston, Texas]]]] '''''Water Lilies''''' (or '''''Nymphéas''''', {{IPA-fr|nɛ̃.fe.a|pron}}) is a series of about 250 [[oil painting]]s by French [[Impressionism|Impressionist]] [[Claude Monet]]. The paintings are of Monet's flower [[garden]] at [[Giverny]]. They were the main focus of Monet's work during the last thirty years of his life. Many of the works were painted while Monet suffered from [[cataract]]s. The paintings are on display in museums all over the world, including the [[Musée Marmottan Monet]] and the [[Musée d'Orsay]] in [[Paris]], the [[Metropolitan Museum of Art]] in [[New York, New York|New York]], the [[Art Institute of Chicago]], the [[Carnegie Museum of Art]] and the [[National Museum of Wales]], among others. As part of his extensive gardening plans at Giverny, Monet had a [[pond]] dug in his garden and planted with [[Lily|lilies]] in 1893. He painted the subject in 1899, and thereafter it dominated his art. He worked continuously for more than twenty years on a large-scale decorative series, attempting to capture every observation, impression, and reflection of the flowers and water. The series captures the blooms at different times of the day, and under different atmospheric conditions. After much hesitation, Monet exhibited a group of 48 water-lily paintings in 1909 at the Paris gallery of his art dealer, Paul Durand-Ruel. The series became an enormous financial, popular, and critical hit. By the mid-1910s, Monet had achieved a completely new, fluid, and somewhat audacious style of painting in which the water-lily pond became the point of departure for an almost [[abstract art]]. ==Related pages== * [[Rouen Cathedral (Monet)]] ==References== * {{citation |url=http://www.mfah.org/art/detail/monet-water-lilies-nympheas/ |title=Nymphease, 1907 |publisher=Museum of Fine Arts, Houston |accessdate=23 January 2013 |archive-date=7 November 2012 |