Water Lilies in Giverny

By 1917 Monet was 76 and had barely left his garden at Giverny in years, while the front line of the Great War sat only about 50 kilometres to the northeast, close enough that on still days the guns could be heard. He kept painting the same pond of water lilies he had dug and planted himself. This canvas catches it at the sunniest hour, the surface broken into oranges and yellows, the flowers floating without a horizon or a bank to hold them. His eyes were beginning to cloud with cataracts, which pushed his colour warmer and looser. Around this time he offered a set of these vast lily paintings to France, a gift meant to stand as a monument for when the war finally ended.