MONET -- GIVERNY & MUSEE DE L'ORANGERIE

 Claude Monet bought a farmhouse and accompanying piece of property about 45 miles outside of Paris in the town of Giverny. Intrigued by Japanese art and landscape paintings, Monet excavated a pond fed by water from the Seine River which passed nearby and built a small simple bridge with a handrail over a narrow outlet of the pond.  He surrounded the pond with attractive gardens and willow trees, planted bamboo from the Orient and brought in water lilies to bloom on the watery surface.  Thus he created an outdoor setting to complement his extensive collection of Japanese prints that he hung in his nearby home.  

Although Claude Monet had painted versions of his bridge and the water lilies in regular sized paintings, in his later life, he painted a water lily series specifically for the Musee de l’Orangerie. In fact, the museum’s space was specifically constructed for these unique works of art. These canvases, with the images of the Giverny water lilies in various seasons and times of day, cover the walls in two very large, elliptical rooms. With no sense of depth, the aquatic plants float vertically on the watery canvas almost independent of the canvas itself.  It is said that the clouded abstract nature of the water lilies may have had something to do with the way Monet was actually seeing his treasured plants; at the time, he was suffering with cataracts and so took advantage of his personal imaging to present us with this masterpiece.  So, was it an abstract vision?  Or his true vision?  Or maybe he took advantage of his true vision to give us an abstract vision.