Water Lilies and Agapanthus

Between 1914 and 1917, with France at war, Monet stayed in his garden at Giverny and worked on the largest project of his life, a cycle of enormous water-lily panels. In 1915 he built a new studio just to hold them. This canvas, about 1.4 metres tall, is one of the easel-sized pictures he painted in those same years. On the left, lily pads float on blue water, a few flowers opening pale yellow. From the right, tall stems of agapanthus lean in over the pond, their blue-violet heads loose and airy. Monet had planted agapanthus along the edge of his water garden. He tried the same pairing on a grand scale in a triptych he kept calling "Agapanthus", and on its left panel, now in Cleveland, conservators found an agapanthus he had painted over with water lilies halfway through.