Nymphéas (fragment)

The present work serves as close-up view of the lily pond at Giverny, a mixture of mossy green and sky blue punctuated with notes of deep purple and flashes of bright chartreuse that mimic dappled sunlight. In April 1883, Monet and his family moved to Giverny, situated at the confluence of the Seine and the Epte about forty miles northwest of Paris. Giverny at the time was a quiet, picturesque farming community of only 279 residents. By autumn, he converted nearly one thousand square meters of his estate into a lavish lily pond, crossed by a Japanese wooden footbridge and ringed by an artful arrangement of flowers, trees and bushes. Silent, mysterious and contemplative, the water garden took its inspiration from the east, a feature that Monet accentuated by planting bamboo, ginkgo trees and Japanese fruit trees around the pond. Although Monet created the lily pond in part to fulfill his passion for gardening, he also intended it as a source of artistic inspiration. Widely hailed as a landmark of late Impressionism, his Nymphéas paintings constitute some of the most innovative and influential works of Monet's entire oeuvre.
The focused nature of the present Nymphéas fragment allows one to examine Monet’s technique of combining contrasting shades to create the illusion of new colors—a technique inspired by advances made in the scientific fields of optics and light. In understanding how the human eye functioned, Monet was able to use this knowledge to manipulate his viewers’ perception using his palette. The contrast of gestures evident between the whirling green and flowing blue add to this illusion of depth and hint at the expressive brushstrokes of future abstract painters. The dynamic combination of colors and textures demonstrated in the present work give a window into the views of Monet’s daily setting as well as his affinity for experimentation, the quality that solidifies his status as a master of modernism.