Irises

In 1913 Monet's head gardener published an article listing the irises that grew at Giverny, among them a variety named after Madame Claude Monet. Siberian and Virginian kinds flowered along the lily pond in spring, Japanese ones later in the season. Between about 1914 and 1917 the painter made some 20 views of them. This one looks down, as if from the Japanese bridge, on a winding path with flowers crowding its edges. Along the bottom the white ground of the canvas still shows through. Most of these pictures are exactly two metres tall, the height of his big water-lily panels, and a photograph from 1920 suggests he once considered adding irises to that great decoration. He left them out. This canvas was still in his studio when he died, and the National Gallery bought it in 1967.