Waterlilies

Date: 1908

Media: oil on canvas

Size: 100.7 x 81.3 cm

Acquired: 1952; Bequest; Gwendoline Davies

Accession Number: NMW A 2480

The Davies Sisters Collection

When this work and forty-seven other Monet paintings of waterlilies (nymph?as) were first exhibited in 1909 an enthusiastic critic proclaimed: 'Here, more than ever before, painting approaches music and poetry. There is in these paintings an inner beauty, refined and pervasive; the beauty of a play and of a concert, a beauty that is both plastic and ideal.' This is the most delicately-coloured and abstract-looking of the three Monet Nymph?as purchased by Gwendoline Davies at Paris in 1913.