六合彩预测

In 1883 Monet rented a house in Giverny, to the west of Paris. In 1890 he was able to buy the house, and in 1893 additional land which he gradually transformed into water gardens. While these gardens took form, throughout the 1890s Monet focussed on series paintings, including views of the and under different light effects. His last series, Mornings on the Seine, was exhibited at the Galerie Georges Petit in 1898. It was around this time that Monet turned attention to his gardens as subjects for painting. At first he concentrated on such motifs as the Japanese bridge, as in , but later moved towards more immersive treatments of the water itself, exploring the play between flowers punctuating its surface and reflections of the unseen sky and trees.

Following a series of personal tragedies, between June 1912 and August 1914 Monet hardly worked at all, but after the outbreak of the First World War in 1914 he returned to painting, believing it his patriotic duty to produce pictures. These included a planned series of large-scale decorations featuring the water-lily pond, to accommodate which he had a new studio built in 1915-6. The day after Armistice on 11 November 1918, he pledged to present a group of these to the French State as a monument to peace. In 1927 twenty-two works were installed in the Orangerie, Paris. Other large-scale decorations, including , remained at Giverny until after the Second World War.

Monet painted his decorations during the winter in his new studio, often working on several canvases at once. During the summer he painted outdoors on smaller canvases such as this. Here he is looking over the pond’s surface at an angle. At the bottom left a strip of bank is marked by a diagonal line of bright green paint; at top right a row of trees is evoked in dark green. The same green is used for the water, on the surface of which float oval lily pads, rendered schematically in shades of blue and purple. The decorative effect is heightened by circular brushwork used to create their ethereal forms, intensified by reinforcing of outlines with lighter or darker paint. Their abstract patterning is interrupted by three creamy-yellow water-lilies, tangible shapes which stand proud of the flat surface of water and leaves.