Claude Monet

James Butler (the stepgrandson of the artist)
Fred Schoeneman Fine Art, New York
Acquired from the above in 1958 

This work is in very good condition and the canvas is unlined. The work has never been removed form its stretcher, and there is some craquelure and a few instances of pigment separation in the thickest pigments, especially lower center and lower right, due to the very thick application of the multiple paint layers. There is a break in the canvas in lower left are of the canvas, about two inches in length, which ahs been repaired with a thin line of glue on the reverse. It is possible that further consolidation would improve the appearance of this tear which is slightly visible to the naked eye. The surface has been recently cleaned and revarnished, and while no inpainting is apparent, this varnish layer fluoresces slightly unevenly under UV light.
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From 1914 on, Monet painted some of the most ambitious canvases of his career, an iconic series of views of the water lily pond in his garden in Giverny.  They were the continuation of a subject which had preoccupied him since 1903, when he embarked on his first water lily series, Les Nymphéas, série de paysages d'eau.  The preparation for these works began in 1890, when Monet expanded his garden by acquiring an adjacent plot of land.  This allowed Monet to create the environment which would provide him with an endless variety of motifs.  In 1901-2 he enlarged the pool (which he had created by diverting the local river Epte) from approximately 65 to 197 feet, and replanted its edges with bamboo, rhododendron, Japanese apple, iris, weeping willows, wisteria and cherry trees, at the same time creating a concrete basin for the African water lilies.  Late in life he told a visitor to his studio that "It took me some time to understand my water lilies.  I planted them purely for pleasure; I grew them with no thought of painting them.  A landscape takes more than a day to get under your skin.  And then, all at once, I had the revelation -- how wonderful my pond was -- and reached for my palette.  I've hardly had any other subject since that moment."(Stephen Koja, Claude Monet, published for the exhibition at the Osterreich Galerie-Belvedere, Vienna, 1996, p. 146)   

In the present work, the surface of the water is alive with elements from the verdant world Monet created.  His dream of immersion for the viewer is achieved, as the water's surface dances with both the plants on its surface and the reflections from the sky above.  The dabs of deep purplish pink set among the white blooms swirling on their stems make up the central element of the composition, and the  wisteria, seen in reflection, hangs in a bright blue curtain that floats mysteriously upward from the bottom of the picture plane.  This characteristic use of broad brushstrokes and near abstraction, along with the flatness of the picture plane and abandonment of traditional perspective has caused the Nymphéas series to be hailed as the first truly abstract art, prefiguring Abstract Expressionism.  The artist himself described his objectives in less extravagant terms: "...The essence of the motif is the mirror of water whose appearance changes in every moment because of the areas of sky reflected in it...The passing cloud, the freshening breeze, the seed which is poised and which then falls, the wind which blows and then suddenly drops, the light which dims and brightens again--all these things...transform the color and disturb the planes of the water."(as quoted in V. Spate, essay Transcending the Moment--Monet's Waterlilies 1899-1926 in Claude Monet, Painter of Light, Auckland, 1985, pp. 27-29, and pg. 30)