Water Lilies

Monet began painting the water lily pond he had constructed at his Giverny property in the Seine valley in the 1890s. He initially exhibited easel-sized paintings of the pond in Paris to great acclaim. As his ambitions for the series grew, and as his vision deteriorated from cataracts, the paintings grew larger and more abstract, until in his final decade he was working on immense canvases measuring several metres each.

After the Allied victory in World War I, Monet proposed donating two large oval rooms of Water Lilies panels to the French state as a gift of national gratitude. He worked on the Orangerie panels until his death in December 1926. The rooms opened in May 1927. Their wraparound panoramic format — visitors stand within a continuous painted environment — anticipated installation art and the immersive experiences of the 21st century by a century.