Water Lilies
As part of his extensive gardening plans at Giverny, Monet had a pond dug in his garden and planted with lilies in 1893. He painted the subject in 1899, and thereafter it dominated his art. He worked continuously for more than twenty years on a large-scale decorative series, attempting to capture every observation, impression, and reflection of the flowers and water. The series captures the blooms at different times of the day, and under different atmospheric conditions. After much hesitation, Monet exhibited a group of 48 water-lily paintings in 1909 at the Paris gallery of his art dealer, Paul Durand-Ruel. The series became an enormous financial, popular, and critical hit. By the mid-1910s, Monet had achieved a completely new, fluid, and somewhat audacious style of painting in which the water-lily pond became the point of departure for an almost abstract art.