Claude Monet (that’s “MOE-nay,” 1840-1926) started creating his waterlily paintings in 1914, as the Great War was beginning. The fighting was mostly to the north and to the east of Giverny, so Monet’s property and studios were not damaged. Pre-invasion bombings by the World War II allies in 1944, however, wrecked some towns around Giverny.
At the small museum in Paris’s Tuileries Garden, L’Orangerie, there are two large curved rooms, Salle I and Salle II, where eight of Monet’s huge waterlily oil paintings are displayed. Four paintings fill the walls in each room. (Orangerie means a plant nursery or greenhouse used to grow orange trees.)
The paintings’ rooms are eggshell white with skylights muted by white scrims, foot-wide holes at the center offering diffused light. Long padded benches in the middle of the room allow for casual admiration, though there’s usually enough of a crowd to require a silent game of musical chairs.
It took me time to understand my water lilies . . . I planted them without thinking of painting them . . . A landscape doesn’t imbue you in a day . . . And then, all at once, I had the enchanting revelation of my pond. I picked up my palette. Since that time I’ve hardly had another model. –CM
Just as Claude himself must have done, the observer of the paintings looks closely, then moves back; looks closely again, then moves back again. The largest of the paintings at L’Orangerie is 6-1/2 feet high by 55 feet long, made up of four canvases stitched together. One of my guidebooks described Monet’s work as “a mess” when you view them from a few feet away. But these paintings, all done before he started suffering badly from cataracts, are sublime.
The cloud which passes over, the breeze which freshens, the heavy shower which threatens and falls, the wind which blows and beats down suddenly, the light which fades and reappears, so many causes, imperceptible to the layman, which transform the color and change the ponds. — CM
After the peace armistice on November 11, 1918, Monet donated his paintings to France. Monet’s friend and frequent house guest Georges Clemenceau, the Prime Minister of France, brokered the deal.
I want to paint the air in which one finds the bridge, the house, the boat. The beauty of the air where they are, and this is nothing other than impossible. — CM
Except for the wonderful light, visitors may feel they’ve entered the hold of a beautiful ship. The curved walls give the feel of a vessel sailing on a sunny day. On the bottom floor of L’Orangerie is the Walter-Guillaume collection with works by Modigliani, Cezanne, Matisse, Soutine, Utrillo, and Picasso.
I have painted many of these water lilies, modifying my point of view each time, renewing the subject depending on the season and as a result, following the differences of the luminous effect which brings about the changes. — CM
In 1893 Monet bought the land that he would transform into his Japanese garden. The garden’s pond grew to contain the water lilies (les nympheas, in French.  Two small boats are moored along the pond’s banks, much like those used by Monet and his gardener to float along the pond edges, He had one gardener working for him during his lifetime in Giverny; there are 18 gardeners working there now.)
Many museums contain Monet paintings. There is a particularly lovely water lily canvas at Chicago’s Art Institute, and the Musee d’Orsay and Marmottan Museum in Paris have fine Monet collections. But the L’Orangerie has a museum space especially designed for these canvases, making it especially worth seeing. L’Orangerie reopened in May 2006 after six years of renovation.
Monet’s work continues to inspire artists today, as you see in the detail below from “Waterlillies, after Monet, Pictures of Magazines,” 2005,  a chromogenic print by Brazilian artist Vik Muniz.Â
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