Water Lily Pond

Toward the top of the picture, a green wooden arched bridge crosses from edge to edge. Below it, lily pads stretch in bands, with white and red flowers blooming here and there. Beyond the bridge is a thicket of willows and bamboo, and the sky is almost invisible.

The picture is nearly square and filled with color centered on green. On the water, the shadows of trees are reflected in vertical brush marks, while the lily pads are expressed in horizontal brush marks. The difference in the direction of the strokes, vertical and horizontal, conveys the depth of the pond.

Claude Monet lived from 1883 in Giverny, northwest of Paris, and made a flower garden in front of the house. In 1893 he bought additional land across the road, dug a pond, planted water lilies and built an arched bridge of the kind seen in ukiyo-e. This work, from 1899, is one of a series of eighteen paintings of this pond and bridge.

Monet's interest then shifted to the effects that changes of light through time and weather produce on the water, leading to the large water lily series of his later years. This work stands at the entrance to that series and is housed in the Pola Museum of Art.