Waterlilies

In the summer of 1914, as war broke out, Monet was 73 and starting on the largest water lily project of his life, a run of huge panels of his pond at Giverny. In 1915 he built a new studio big enough to hold them. This canvas, about 1.6 by 1.8 metres, belongs to that moment. There is no shore and no horizon. The willows and the clouds appear only as reflections in the water, with lily pads and a few white and red flowers floating across them. A photograph from 1915 shows Monet at work on this very painting outdoors in the garden. He never sold it and never signed it. After his death in 1926 it passed to his son Michel, who kept it at home until 1959, when the Portland Art Museum bought it for 60,000 dollars. Soon afterwards it was varnished during a restoration, which Monet had never wanted, and in 2024 and 2025 the museum's conservators removed that yellowed varnish.