I R I S E S . by the pond @vmfamuseum Claude Monet, French, 1840–1926 “The wat Show Content
I R I S E S . by the pond
@vmfamuseum Claude Monet, French, 1840–1926
“The water garden at Giverny served as his most important source of inspiration during the final decades of his life and career. In 1893, he bought a plot of land that neighbored his property and had a pond dug on the site. Inspired by the Japanese prints he avidly collected, he shaped his garden according to harmonious marriages of color, filling it throughout with curves and asymmetries, and planting rare and imported weeping willows, bamboo, and water lilies to build an aesthetic oasis sheltered from the surrounding countryside.
Once it had taken form, Monet began an intensive exploration of the garden’s perspectives and colors, representing their reflections on the surface of the pond in a series of paintings that expanded its scale onto mural-sized canvases intended to comprise an immersive interior decor. When the painter rediscovered these attempts in his basement sometime in 1914 following a period of relative inactivity, he began enthusiastically experimenting with the subject matter once again in this large-scale format.
Irises by the Pond is one of several studies of water lilies that Monet transported from the bank of his pond into the new studio that he had built to accommodate these enormous canvases. In his attempts to perfect the composition of this motif, he made several similar canvases worked up in a thick layering of wet-over-dry paint during extended periods.”
#ClaudeMonet #Impressionism #IrisesByThePond #WaterGarden #VMFA #Giverny #ArtInspiration #FrenchArt #Masterpiece #WaterLilies #ArtLovers #ArtHistory #PaintingOfTheDay #MonetGiverny #NatureInArt #GardenInspiration #FineArt #ArtMuseum #CulturalHeritage #ArtForEveryone #ImpressionistArt