Monet Water Lilies

Book excerpt: A complete catalog of Monet’s famous Water Lilies, featuring 210 paintings from private and public collections. Monet devoted the last twenty-five years of his life to painting the water lilies that floated on the pond of his garden in Giverny. In capturing the reflections on the mirror-like water and the subtle interplay of light, the artist’s genius went "beyond painting," committing to his canvas the otherwise ephemeral. The Water Lilies brought together in this volume, are "mirrors of time" that influenced the greatest painters of modern times. A catalogue raisonné of the 251 Water Lilies known to exist, essays of art historians Jean-Dominique Rey and the late Denis Rouart, panoramic photographs of the Orangerie murals in Paris, period photographs of Giverny by Henri Cartier-Bresson, and rare archival documents complete the work.