Claude Monet by the Lily Pond

In the final entry of "Monet: The Art of the Series," we visit Monet at his water-lily pond in Giverny.

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Water Lilies, Claude Monet ca. 1917-1919. Via Wikimedia Commons.

As the First World War embroiled France, Georges Clemenceau made a trip to Normandy to visit his artist-friend at Giverny. The former prime minister (who would be elected to lead France once again in 1917) was concerned about Claude Monet, and he felt he had just the project to revive the painter’s spirits.

The rest of Europe was engulfed in disaster and death; the modern world had come marching into view with the sound of machine guns and the suffocation of mustard gas. The Belle Époque, the world of Impressionism, had disappeared. At Giverny, Monet was dealing with his own tragedies—his wife Alice had died in 1911, and his eldest son Jean had died in 1914. Already prone to depressive episodes, Monet sunk into a deep, impenetrable melancholy.

You may recall that several years before, Clemenceau endeavored to buy Monet’s Rouen Cathedral series for the country. Clemenceau was determined to secure some of his friend’s works for the French people, especially now that so many of the Impressionists’ art resided in the United States. (To which Paul Durand-Ruel would likely say, the French should have bought the art when they had the chance! It was Durand-Ruel’s idea to bring the art to the States in 1886 after poor reception in France, and this decision cemented the success of Impressionism on the global stage.)¹

At Giverny, Clemenceau proposed the idea of a Water Lilies series painted for the French nation. The government could even help Monet secure supplies to build a separate, larger studio on the grounds of Giverny for the project. At 24 by 12 meters (about 79 by 39 feet), the studio could only be constructed during the war thanks to Clemenceau’s connections.²

Water Lilies, Morning, Claude Monet ca. 1914-1926. One of eight Water Lilies panels in the Musée de l’Orangerie in Paris, Morning is a quadriptych that stretches 1275 cm. long by 200 c. wide, or 502 by 78.75 in. Via Wikimedia Commons.

Detail from Water Lilies, Morning (above).