Nenúfares azuis

Monet was 75 when he began this canvas, and at Giverny the guns of the front were close enough to be heard in the garden. He stayed and went on painting the pond. In 1915 he had a third studio put up in the grounds, a large plain hall, because the pictures he now wanted to make were too big for any room he had. This one is two metres square, one of the water lily canvases in which the pond fills the whole surface, with no bank, no horizon and no sky except what the water gives back. The day after the armistice in November 1918 he wrote to his friend Clemenceau, then prime minister, offering the state two panels to mark the victory, a gift that grew into the rooms at the Orangerie. This canvas stayed in private hands until the Musee d'Orsay bought it in 1981.