Claude Monet’s Nymphéas

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To continue the talk about art history and different pieces I saw during my stay in Paris, I will talk about Claude Monet’s ‘Nymphéas’ (Water Lilies) series. He dedicated his life to painting nature in all its forms, however the last years of his life consisted of creating this beautiful series of water lilies from his personal garden.

Claude Monet is the pioneer of the impressionist movement in art and one of my favorite artists of all time. I wrote poems about some of his paintings, as I can’t help but get lost in his unique brush strokes and pastel palette choices. Somewhere between realism and imagination, he breathes new life into each scenery he chooses to paint, creating this foggy dream-like state, where everything is foggy yet perfectly clear at the same time, crossing the thin line of what reality is. Because who even knows what is real anymore.

Monet’s vision started to deteriorate during the last years of his life, however despite that he managed to create one of the most famous art pieces of all time.

This particular series I’ll be talking about is one of the most iconic and celebrated works in the history of art, embodying the artist's fascination with light, color, and nature. Created over the last three decades of his life, the *Nymphéas* consists of around 250 paintings that focus on the water garden in Monet's home in Giverny, France. The series captures the tranquil beauty of the pond, its water lilies, reflections, and the surrounding environment. Monet's innovative approach to color, brushwork, and abstraction marked a significant departure from traditional landscape painting.

These paintings I showed here were specifically created for the oval walls of Musée de l'Orangerie in Paris. They were a personal gift from Monet as a symbol of peace after World War I, completed between 1914 and 1926.

I included some close-ups of these paintings, since they are quite large and can be overwhelming. Trying to capture them whole we can get lost in the canvas and skim over these gorgeous details, as every single brush stroke has a flow of its own. I can’t help but get lost in his work, as if for those minutes I am transported into this place of complete unknown, yet utter peace, where my consciousness flows with each brush stroke I see.