Water Lilies

1906

Oil on canvas, 89.9 × 94.1 cm. The Art Institute of Chicago

A view straight down onto the Giverny pond, lilies floating among reflections. It is a step toward the mural-size water lilies of Monet's last years.

Bank and sky are gone; reflections of clouds and trees float in a pond with no horizon. Light on water, an early Impressionist subject, becomes the whole picture.
Monet's first water-lily paintings of 1897–99 still showed the bridge and trees below a horizon.
It was shown in Durand-Ruel's 1909 Paris exhibition of Monet's water landscapes.
Look at how the reflected trees and clouds seem to hang inside the water.
Martin A. Ryerson of Chicago bought it in 1914 and left it to the Art Institute in 1933.

Water lilies float on the surface of the pond, and the water around them mirrors the sky and trees above. Looking down, Monet painted both at once.

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