Monet's Water Lilies

The image shown above is one of the eight Claude Monet Water Lily images on display at the Musée de l’Orangerie in Paris.  Built solely to house eight of Monet’s water lilies, the Musée de l’Orangerie has eight of the water lilies on display, all of which depict a pond with water lilies in the different seasons (two per season; the above image shows the water lilies in the Spring).  Click here for a virtual tour of the Musée de l’Orangerie (click "Visite Virtuelle" to start the tour).

In the later years of his life, renowned impressionist artist Claude Monet created hundreds of paintings featuring water lilies from his garden in Giverny.  The above image presents water lilies during springtime, and it is fascinating how springtime dictated many of the painting’s elements.  Spring is a transition season from cold to warm, and these changes are expressed metaphorically by the painting’s changing hues, from darker blues to lighter lavenders.  It appears as if rays of light are pouring onto the pinker sections of the water, a deliberate choice that uses pathos to appeal to the audience’s typical associations with springtime as a time of light and growth.  The painting appeals to natural human emotional connections between light colors and feelings of peace and tranquility, which likely  resonates with a wide audience of people around the world.  In particular, the painting’s positive depiction of the pond seems like an endeavor to impress upon the audience the value of natural beauty.  Monet effectively uses his audience’s cultural memory, which helps lead the audience to the painting’s purpose.  Monet’s purpose was to have his water lilies cohesively act as a motif of water, and remarked, “The motif's essential is the mirror of water whose aspect is constantly being modified.”  This is immediately clear to the viewer: the focal point of water, with the water lilies and tree simply as the painting’s border, highlights water’s importance to the image as well as its diversity, and the pastel colors used create feelings associated with springtime.