1896–1926: Claude Monet and the Water Lilies
There is perhaps no image more associated with the Impressionism Art Movement than that of Claude Monet’s water lilies. Comprising a series of roughly 250 oil paintings created between 1896 and his death in 1926, these beautiful, bright works were a triumph amidst personal lose and health issues. Monet’s second wife, Alice Hoschedé, died in 1911. His oldest son died in 1914 from tuberculosis. His younger son Michel was deployed to the front to serve in the French Army during World War I. Monet even developed cataracts which would eventually require two surgeries to remove them so that he might continue his painting.
Monet would continue creating his water lily paintings until he died on lung cancer on December 5, 1926 at the age of 86.
To Monet the paintings he did at his home in Giverny would become a consuming passion and the pinnacle of his artistic masterpieces. The world would agree, and the paintings he did while living in his home at Giverny would be amongst the most appreciated, and most prized, of his long life. They would replace the varied contemporary subjects he had painted from the 1870s through the 1890s. The focal point of this series would begin with Monet’s…
