Nenúfares, Tempo Cinzento

By 1907 Monet had been painting the same pond in his garden at Giverny for about ten years, and that year he stood the canvases upright. This one is taller than it is wide, 100 centimetres by 73. The series had already lost its banks and its sky; what is left is water seen from above, with reflections doing the work the horizon used to do, and this is one of the versions made under cloud rather than sun. He had promised his dealer Durand-Ruel a Paris show of the new pictures, then put it off, then put it off again. In April 1908 his wife Alice wrote that he was making holes in canvases almost daily, and he later admitted, with some satisfaction, to destroying at least 30 of them. What survived went on the walls on 6 May 1909, 48 paintings under a single heading, a series of water landscapes.