Waterlilies

Date: 1906

Media: oil on canvas

Size: 81.6 x 92.7 cm

Acquired: 1952; Bequest; Gwendoline Davies

Accession Number: NMW A 2487

The Davies Sisters Collection

From the Japanese bridge in his water garden, Monet obtained a high viewpoint of the water and a correspondingly steep picture plane, uninterrupted by the shoreline. The reflective surface of a pond with its floating vegetation seems transformed into limitless space. In 1908 he wrote: 'These landscapes of water and reflection have become an obsession...yet I want to succeed in rendering what I perceive'. This is one of three Monet paintings of waterlilies (nymph?as) purchased by Gwendoline Davies at Paris in 1913.