Water Lilies (Nymphéas)

Claude Monet

Oil on canvas

Musée d'Orsay

Claude Monet's Water Lilies—known in French as Nymphéas—is not a single painting but a celebrated series of approximately 250 oil paintings created between the late 1890s and the artist's death in 1926, all centered on the water lily pond at his estate in Giverny, Normandy. The works depict the shimmering surface of the pond—its floating blooms, reflected clouds, and willow branches—rendered with loose, luminous brushwork that progressively dissolved conventional perspective and the horizon line, edging toward pure abstraction. Monet, one of the defining figures of French Impressionism, developed his garden at Giverny into both a personal sanctuary and an open-air studio, meticulously designing its plantings as living subject matter. The series stands as the crowning achievement of his career, culminating in the monumental decorative panels permanently installed in two oval rooms at the Musée de l'Orangerie in Paris, opened to the public in 1927.