睡莲池,粉红色的和谐

Monet dug his water garden at Giverny in 1893, diverting a branch of the Epte to feed a pond and planting it with the white lilies he had shipped in. By 1900 the pond had become his main subject. This is one of a dozen canvases of the same view, the green Japanese footbridge arching over the water, each worked in a slightly different key of colour. This one he titled a harmony in pink, the light warming the lilies and the bank to a soft rose. He showed the whole set at the Durand-Ruel gallery in Paris late in 1900. The bridge here still stands over an open sheet of water. In the paintings that came after, the lilies would spread until the far bank and the bridge dropped out of view altogether.