MONET's water lily pond

Monet's gardens in his house in Giverny they had a great influence on the movement Impressionistic as it is not only a place of inspiration for the painter, but also a meeting point for other impressionists such as Cézanne, Renoir, Sisley, Pissarro, Matisse and John Singer Sargent.

In this lesson from unPROFESOR.com we offer you the comment and analysis of The Nymphae Pond, one of the key works of Claude Monet's last pictorial stage.

Index

1. Historical context of The Water Lily Pond
2. Comment from The Nymphaean Pond
3. Analysis of the work

“A landscape doesn't get under your skin in a day. And then all of a sudden I had the revelation of how lovely my pond was. I took my palette. Since then I have hardly had another topic. "

These were Claude Monet's words to the novelist Marc elder in 1924 when talking about the garden in which this pond of water lilies or water lilies was located.

Claude monet

In 1899 he returned to perform 18 different views of the bridge over the pond and the water lilies. A series that he carried out in the summer of 1899, exhibiting them at the Durand-Rue Galleryl in Paris in 1900, and to which it belongs.

The pond became a refuge for the painter for his old age, fleeing the bustle of modern cities such as Paris or London and the controversial and difficult situation that France was going through at the height of the so-called Dreyfus case. A kind of Eden in the style of his Argenteuil garden in the 70s of the XIX.

Following the precepts of Impressionism, Monet showed a enormous fascination for the effects of light, steam and fog on landscapes. A concern that led him to paint outdoors and with very fast brushstrokes. In this case, The Nymphae Pond (1899), shows a pond with water lilies and a Japanese bridge painted with colored spots and in which Monet captured the reflections at a time of day when the sun shines more strongly.

The table presents a vertical format, unusual in the series to which it belongs, but which allows us to appreciate the relationship between aquatic vegetation, water and land, underlining the prominence of the lilies and the bridge. Two realities offered by the contrast between the marked verticality of the bars that support the ramp of the bridge and the fluid image of the water lilies expanding horizontally beyond the plane of the picture.

Keep in mind that Monet he painted the entire series from a makeshift studio and always located in the same observation point. He also used to use a rowboat to tie the bridge to paint the bridge with a frontal view from there.

Once the works were finished, Monet retouched them before exhibiting them, highlighting color and shape. Thus, in the 1899 canvases, the painter focused more on greenish tones, while in those of 1900, Monet opted more for warmer tones.

And now we are going to attend to the analysis of The Nymphae Pond knowing the most technical aspects about this work of art by Monet, author of other emblematic paintings such as Woman with umbrella.

The color, the textures and the light

As we have already noted, Monet settled on cool hues, specifically greens, blues and violets, in contrast to the yellows and reflecting the warmth of the overhead light. The natural forms are organized in a complex way and with very marked textures to recreate the organic and natural forms of the water lilies.

To do this, Monet used the spatula and a dense, pasty pigment, in addition to using thick, fast, undefined strokes and without defining the contours. A way of painting that offers a sensation of dynamism and movement, getting very close to abstraction due to its free way of capturing the landscape.

Another of the typical features of Impressionism is the play with light and color. Thus, the forms are composed in the eye to take a certain distance, thus being a figurative work. A outdoor painting that shows the zenithal and natural light, achieving depth thanks to the differences in lighting, that is, darker in the foreground and lighter in the background.

Composition

For the realization of this work, Monet was inspired by the collection of Japanese ukijo-e woodcuts with images of bridges. Some engravings that the painter collected since the 1860s, turning everything Japanese into fashion, especially the arts, in the late nineteenth century, at which time Monet made these series.

A notion that could have come to the painter through the series of prints of Japanese landscapes such as the famous Thirty-six views of Mount Katsushika Hokusai. Specifically, Monet owned nine engravings of the series, and three volumes of One Hundred Views of Mount Fuji from Hokusai they were among a long list of books and articles on Japanese art and culture that filled his library.

The flattening of the image with the bridge motif and its contained view are also considered a inspiration in the compositions of the Japanese artists Hiroshige and Hokusai.

In addition, Monet, who had created his garden for aesthetic purposes and as a hobby, intended to build a meditation area with all the paintings dedicated to this water lily pond. This painting of The Ninfeas Pond has been found since 1929 in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, USA.

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• Tobien, Felicitas (2016). Claude Monet. Editors
• Monet, Claude (2012). The painting from the garden. Casimiro Books
• Mirbeau, Octave (2011). Claude Monet and Giverny. Jose J. by Olañeta