Close Look: Claude Monet’s Water Lilies

Water Lilies is the central panel of a triptych, or three-panel painting, that Monet entitled Agapanthus.

Monet worked on this triptych in his studio located in Giverny, France.

The total width of the three panels is 12.77 meters.

That’s 41 feet 11 inches.

The central panel of this triptych,

titled Water Lilies, came to the Saint Louis Art Museum in 1956.

The right panel was acquired by the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City in 1957.

The left panel was acquired by the Cleveland Museum of Art in 1960.

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Technical Analysis

Five main pigments make up the color palette for the central (St. Louis) panel of Monet’s Agapanthus:

lead white, cobalt violet, cobalt blue, cadmium yellow, and chrome green.

The water lily groupings can be divided into two horizontal bands.

Let’s take a look at the upper left section of the painting.

In this detail we can see the blended blues and violets.

These mixtures are a result of cobalt violet (left) and lead white (right).

Monet combined these colors in different ways to create a range of blues and violets,

suggesting the reflection of sky and clouds on the surface of the pond.

Looking at the lower left section of the central (St. Louis) panel,

this detail highlights

an area composed of blended yellows and greens.

The two main pigments, chrome green (left) and cadmium yellow (right),

create this mix of warm, natural hues.

These colors evoke grassy fronds rising up from the shallow areas of the pond, and suggest reflections of weeping willow branches.

Near the center of this panel,

Monet worked with a subtle range of cool and warm tints.

The mottled effect is a result of Monet’s wet-on-wet technique.

The artist applied multiple layers of wet paint directly on the canvas creating complex colors and accents.

Looking at the flowers in the center of this panel,

Monet has suggested the water lily forms with just a few brushstrokes.

Despite the absence of naturalistic details, the red accents reflect Monet’s love for rare water lily species.

These species contrast with the yellow and white varieties grown more frequently in France.

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Monet and His Garden

In 1883, Claude Monet moved with his family to the village of Giverny, France.

The house and property were an abandoned farm, known as Le Pressoir (the cider press), with overgrown fruit and flower gardens.

Monet would live there for over 40 years until his death in 1926.

During his time in Giverny, the artist renovated the house and redesigned the gardens.

The lush flowers and trees of Le Pressoir fill many of Monet’s paintings.

Monet’s later renovations included the creation of a pond surrounded by weeping willows.

To accomplish this, Monet negotiated with the local government and received permission to divert a branch of the nearby Epte River.

Monet’s efforts resulted in a peaceful setting where plants, including water lilies, flourished.

At the edge of his pond, Monet drew inspiration for his painting.

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Plants and Flowers

An 1894 bill of sale from Latour-Marliac nursery shows the wide range of plants that Monet purchased for his garden.

The first page of the invoice includes grasses, flowering plants, and other aquatic species:

3 Polygonum amphibium (Water Smartweed)

3 Trapa natans (Water Chestnut)

3 Trapa verbenensis or narbonensis (Horn Nut)

3 Arundinacea picta (Syn. Phalaris arundinacea picta, Ribbon Grass)

3 Caltha polypetala (Syn. Caltha palustris, Marsh Marigold)

3 Carex folliculata (Northern Long Sedge)

3 Eriophorum latifolium (Broad-leaved Bog Cotton)

3 Eriophorum scheuchzeri (White Cottongrass)

3 Gymnotheca chinensis

3 Hydrocotyle bonariensis (Largeleaf Pennywort)

3 Hydrocotyle vulgaris (Marsh Pennywort)

3 Hydropyrum latifolium (Syn. Zizania latifolia, Manchurian Wild Rice)

3 Lysimachia vulgaris (Yellow Loosestrife)

3 Myriophyllum proserpinacoides (Syn. Myriophyllum aquaticum, Parrot Feather)

3 Orontium aquaticum (Goldenclub)

3 Pontederia montevidensis (Pickerel Rush)

3 Sagittaria gracilis (Syn. Sagittaria sagittifolia, Arrowhead)

3 Saururus cernuus (Lizard’s tail)

3 Saururus loureiroi (Syn. Saururus chinensis, Chinese Lizard’s Tail)

The second page reveals the three types of water lilies and five lotus varieties that Monet selected.

The three lily types are:

Nymphaea flava (Nymphaea mexicana)

Nymphaea ‘laydekeri rosea’ (Latour-Marliac, 1892 Pink)

Nymphaea sulfurea grandiflora (Latour-Marliac, 1888 Yellow)

Included on this second page are planting instructions for the five lotus plants that Monet also ordered:

“Lotus are perfectly capable of growing outdoors in the Eure departement [area of Normandy and Giverny], as is mentioned in the catalogue. The rhizomes must be planted horizontally and carefully covered with earth in the pond where they are to be planted. They should not be placed in more than 50 cm of water.”

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The Studio

Monet planned to create a multi-panel mural that would fully immerse the viewer in his lily pond.

These large multi-panel paintings were called Grandes Décorations.

This undertaking required that Monet build a large studio, completed by 1916, to accommodate these paintings.

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Monet’s Revisions

With his lily pond as inspiration, Monet worked on the Agapanthus triptych for over a decade,

revising the composition and paint surface.

Through several historic photographs, we can see the changes he made.

On November 11, 1917, Joseph Durand-Ruel, an art dealer, photographed the artist’s studio.

The left (Cleveland) and central (St. Louis) panels appear behind the large worktable stocked with paintbrush pots and a palette.

Around the same time, another photograph was taken of Monet and his friend, Georges Clemenceau, prime minister of France, who specifically visited the studio to see Monet’s multi-panel paintings.

The left (Cleveland) and central (St. Louis) panels appear again just behind Monet in this image.

Both photographs show the left (Cleveland) panel of the triptych where the arching forms of the agapanthus plant are visible.

A 1921 photograph of all three panels documents a different triptych than what we see today.

The left (Cleveland) panel shows where the artist removed the agapanthus plant on the left riverbank.

The central (St. Louis) panel reveals how Monet removed water lilies from the foreground of the painting.

The right (Kansas City) panel reflects Monet’s decision to remove some of the water lilies. He also blended colors in the center to create a dappled effect.

Although Monet painted over the agapanthus plant in the left (Cleveland) panel, he continued to refer to this triptych as Agapanthus.

Today the reworked central (St. Louis) panel no longer includes the water lilies originally in the foreground,

nor any indication of the pond’s edge.

Instead, we are immersed in an abstract, watery world, of Monet’s creation.

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